Growing Instructions for a Night-Blooming Cereus Plant

Plant night-blooming cereus in large, unglazed terra cotta pots. This allows the soil to dry rapidly after watering and also helps support the big plants, which tend to be top-heavy. Be sure to protect your floor or tabletop from water runoff.

Use potting soil specially formulated for cactuses, or make your own mixture of equal parts regular potting soil, peat moss and sharp sand or perlite.

Allow the plants to dry thoroughly between waterings. Discard any extra water after 15 minutes.

Feed night-blooming cereus once yearly in late spring. Use a standard houseplant fertilizer diluted to half-strength.

Site indoor plants next to a sunny, west-facing or south-facing window or under plant lights. If grown indoors all year, they must have complete darkness from sunset to dawn during their blooming season, July to October, to produce flowers.

Set plants outdoors — if desired — during summer, as the plants tolerate temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit without harm. They need direct sunlight for part of the day, so an eastern exposure is ideal. Bring the plants back indoors before the first frost.

Prune as necessary to keep this sprawling, vigorous plant within bounds. Remove thin, rounded stems at the base of the plant, but prune back flat stems to a node. Night-blooming cereus will still bloom even if pruned back to 2 to 3 feet in height. Flower buds appear on the edges of the flat stems and are long and thin. Plants bloom only after they have reached the age of 4 or 5 years.