By now our Christmas cactus has bloomed - or it hasn't.

If it hasn't set flowers it is because ours didn't enjoy the nurture that professional growers give theirs to induce them to bloom during the holiday season.

Growers know that the Christmas cactus is day-length sensitive. That means that it "knows" when to bloom when it experiences diminishing hours of daylight as we progress toward winter. This plant needs a month or so of days with eight hours of daytime and sixteen hours of nighttime. If yours is a house plant with artificial light at night it shrugs its shoulders and waits until next year to set buds.

Another prompter for holiday bloom for your Christmas cactus is cool temperatures. Any temperature that hovers somewhere around 50 degrees is optimum. This means that keeping your plant in a warm house with artificial light is going to deprive your plant of the signals it needs for seasonal flower production.

Can there be any blooms that rival that of the Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter cactus? They are waxy and sometimes four or more inches long. Usually there are two tiers of petals with the stamen, pistil and anther in the middle of it, ending in a little protruding, blood-red exclamation point. Every year it seems you find them in yet another wonderful color - pink, white, coral.

Buying a plant in this family is a little like raising koi or parrots - a commitment since they live a long time. I have a plant that was my mother's which must be at least forty years old. Only last year did it appear to need repotting, since they prefer to be root bound.

Christmas cactus is not cold hardy in our Zone 8, so it needs to be brought into a cool but frost-free place to overwinter. Mine spend the summer on my front porch and gets watered about every other time with the other plants there. Direct sun will scald the foliage, and next summer I plan to place mine out in a leaky cement bird bath in a shady spot outside. I'll move them into the greenhouse when cold threatens.

Cacti demand good drainage and only need to be watered when the soil feels dry to the touch. Insects or disease are not usually a problem.

Something went awry with one of mine last year. It bloomed on Martin Luther King Day.