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Have a spare box? Save it for your holiday cacti.

Making It Grow Radio Minute
Provided
/
SC Public Radio
Making It Grow, hosted by Amanda McNulty

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. If you want more challenges to have the perfect Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, you can try to provide the correct light and temperature requirements so your Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti bloom. They need a certain amount of darkness and cooler night temperatures, and higher humidity than many parts of your house. The humidity isn’t hard, put them in bright indirect sun on rocks in a water-filled dish. If you put them in a closet for darkness but open the door even one time to get a coat or such and let in light, you are up the creek. It’s easier to just put a box over them, no one is going to keep their winter coat under a box! Hybrid Holiday cacti are the ones most available and they aren’t so persnickety.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.