12/05/2023
Cyclamen give brightly coloured, long-lived flowers🌹🌷 all through the Winter and feature beautiful marbled foliage. Cyclamen live for ages, dozens of years!
They actually love the cool and do all their growing in the Winter too, what a great plant for Sth Gippy.
Care: this plant wants to live sitting up a bit above the soil, so don't over-bury the tubers under the stalks. In terms of watering, if you can, water a bit carefully -pouring onto the soil around the plant, but not on the actual stalks/base of plant. Soil can dry out quite a bit and it's happy with that, but if it looks droopy, quick, get onto it. Kokedamas are a great way to be able to ensure they are not sitting in excess water. If you like, water by adding a little water to the stand and let it soak it up. Or if it's really dried out, dunk it a few times in the sink/a container (keeping the leaves and stalk from touching water), drain and put back in position. Fading flowers and any dodgy leaves should be plucked out as they occurr (support the base of the plant with your other hand so U don't yank out the whole plant. 😆 Keep on this mission, the cyclamen will respond well to your fussing, just be gentle with the foliage. Those little cyclamen stalks are SOO easy to snap🥺 and these are long-lived leaves and flowers, so the plant will miss these for a long time. They love a bit of liquid fertliser, too.
You get crazy bright flowers in winter with Cyclamen for years and years, the trade-off is they take a noticable rest in Summer. That's right, when they go all small and leaves look yellow in Summer, they are not dying, they're going dormant!! Stick em somewhere coolish and don't bother watering much, if at all.
Cyclamen are often grown indoors, but only suit a cold room, not one you heat.They just can't survive the dry air, but will love a bright spot in your kitchen with lots of indoor light if the kitchen doesn't receive much warmth from heating in the colder months.
Otherwise, outside is good. They like a location where there is not too much intense sun in summer, but need to keep getting the sun ☀️ in Winter. The solution - plant under a deciduous tree. Or if you can be bothered to think about the changing position of the sun across seasons, pick your spot with this in mind.
