The Kalanchoe, One Of The Favorite Indoor Plants Among The French

Kalanchoe is a succulent plant native to Africa and Madagascar. Very sensitive to cold, this tropical perennial is cultivated in pots and indoors in our regions, in order to enjoy its beautiful flowering and/or its highly decorative foliage for a long time.

Which kalanchoe can be cultivated at home?

Depending on the species, there are more than a hundred of them, kalanchoe can be shrubby or climbing. Its shape, dimensions, as well as its flowering and foliage vary greatly from one species to another. Among the most cultivated ones, we find in particular:

• the essential Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, which measures up to 40 cm in all directions and offers a flowering in tight clusters composed of tubular flowers in red, orange, yellow, white or pink depending on the variety;
• Kalanchoe calandiva, which produces double flowers in rosettes with colors as diverse as those of the Blossfeld Kalanchoe;
• the chandelier plant, Kalanchoe tubiflora, which measures 30 cm in height and produces long cylindrical gray-green and brown-red leaves, as well as a pendant reddish-orange flowering grouped in panicles;
• Kalanchoe behariensis, a shrubby species that reaches 1 m in height in a pot and offers a very ornamental long and triangular foliage, covered with down and a gray to light brown color;
• Kalanchoe pumila, a small creeping kalanchoe, which measures 30 cm in height and offers oval and toothed leaves tinted with white bloom, as well as a winter flowering in clusters of pink-mauve flowers.

Cultivating kalanchoe indoors

In our latitudes, kalanchoe is cultivated in pots to protect it from the cold. Indeed, this tropical plant does not tolerate temperatures below 10°C.

Place its pot in a bright location. If it needs to be brought indoors for the winter, your potted kalanchoe can spend the summer outside on your balcony or terrace. However, be careful to protect it from the scorching sun.

During the growing season, water your tropical perennial once every 15 days, without wetting its foliage. You can water it up to once a week during flowering.

In winter, reduce your watering to once a month, so that the substrate does not dry out completely.

Repot your kalanchoe in spring in a well-drained substrate (special soil for Mediterranean plants or soil for flowering plants mixed with coarse sand).

An application of fertilizer once a month during the summer helps support flowering and the beauty of the foliage. Also, make sure to remove faded flowers and dead leaves as they appear.