kalanchoe Tagged Articles

There are over 125 species of Kalanchoes and some of them can reach an impressive height of six metres.

Joycelyn recently took some cuttings of the Kalanchoe blossfeldiana in our office and are still patiently waiting for it to sprout properly.

It will probably only reach a height of 30 cm which is nothing compared to the Kalanchoe luciae growing for Small House / Big Garden in the US!

What is the tallest flower you have grown?

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Cat works in the marketing team and is responsible for online marketing, social media and the newsletter.
She spends most of her time reading about a variety of interesting facts, such as oddly named Canadian towns, obscure holidays and unusual gardening.
She mostly writes about Primrose news and current events.

See all of Cat’s posts.

We have a whole jungle of houseplants at the Primrose office, including several specimens of Kalanchoe blossfeldiana – a very common succulent that you might recognise by its tiny, brightly-coloured blooms (common name ‘Flaming Katy’).

You can see it looking pretty in a zinc planter on your right.

Our kalanchoes’ blooms have all withered away, but they’re still growing rapidly and, to be honest, the biggest of them has been getting tall and leggy.

So, a few weeks ago I gave it a trim and stuck the cut stems in a cup of water.

This is my first attempt at propagating from cuttings, but it seems to be going well. Some of the cuttings are growing tons of roots!

Once they’re long enough (an inch long or more), I will put them each in soil and keep my fingers crossed that they continue to thrive. I’ve just potted up the first two, whose roots grew much more quickly than the others.

It’s really simple to make cuttings yourself – snip off a stem, remove leaves from the lower portion of stem (roots will be growing out of the leaf nodes), and put them in water by a nice sunny window. Change the water once or twice a week to prevent rot. Soon, with luck, little white roots will start appearing.

Lots of plants can be grown from stem or leaf cuttings, some more readily than others. You can also buy rooting hormone to speed up the process, but these cuttings have grown just fine without it.

It seems amazing to me that you can just cut off a part of a plant, and it will grow into a new separate child – a clone of its parent.

Aren’t plants incredible?

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Joycelyn is a member of the Primrose marketing team.
She is a novice windowsill gardener but hopes to graduate to larger plants one day. She enjoys British food (despite its sometimes bad reputation) and British scenery.
At Primrose, when not tending to office plants, she deals with online advertising and social media.

See all of Joycelyn’s posts.