Cyclamen

 Cyclamen are cool-season plants that bloom in the winter.  They are often given as holiday gifts.  This year instead of a poinsettia, I bought a cyclamen.

Last year, I had a poinsettia and saved it and tried to get it to rebloom this year. Well, everything was going fine until late fall when I tried to give it a dark time every night.  For some reason, which I don’t understand, one day the whole thing just withered up and died…after all that work!

So I told everyone, don’t give me a poinsettia this year…and no one did! Instead I now have a beautiful pink cyclamen. (Nobody bought me that either.  I bought it myself!)

I’ve never had one before, but according to the somewhat helpful tag attached, they are easy to take care of and will bloom for months if you keep them evenly moist and provide cool evening temperatures.  That’s easy enough to do since we always reduce the heat in our house at night anyway so I’m expecting my cyclamen to bloom until March, maybe.

Cyclamen are part of the primrose family, which in my part of the country is an early spring bloomer. I have not noticed that my cyclamen has any fragrance, but I’ve read that they do have a lovely fragrance. (I don’t have a very good nose, maybe it does?)

Cyclamen range in colors from white to dark magenta.  Like poinsettias, cyclamen take months to grow and bloom, but if you buy one in bloom it should bloom for months, and since Winter can be long, dull, and colorless having a flowering plant inside is fun.

Because cyclamen grow from corms, it's a good idea to water them from the bottom, allowing the roots to take up the moisture they need. If you don’t normally water a plant from the bottom you need to put your plant on a saucer and if possible insert a wick.

I use a short piece of old pantyhose, which I’ve fringed on one end and then rolled into a small tube. I use a wooden skewer to push my little tube into the drainage hole in the bottom of the plant. Then I spread the fringed end out around the hole and place the pot on the saucer.  Keep a small amount of water in the saucer.  You can water African violets the same way.

Once your cyclamen has finished blooming, it's fine to toss it out.  This is very difficult for me to do (remember the poinsettia project?) so I’ll probably dig up the corm and replant it in my garden as soon as the soil is workable in the spring.

If you want to do this, also, plant the corm just below the soil surface in a partially shady spot. I’m putting mine in my shade garden between two small hostas.  If you’re lucky your cyclamen will bloom again in July or August.  I don’t know what will happen then, but if it dies by itself, that’s easier for me to deal with than throwing a healthy plant in the garbage.

Thanks for reading Julie's Garden Journal.