Kalanchoes are a bright-blooming houseplant that brighten up homes during Maine’s dark days of winter. The blooms are yellow, pink, orange, red or white.

You probably will end up with a kalanchoe because you or the person who gave it to you couldn’t resist the prolific blossoms in a garden-shop display and bought one. So, all you have to do at first is enjoy the blooms.

If you want to keep it alive, and even better get it to bloom again, it will take some work.

Kalanchoes like the low humidity of winter homes and will do fine if the temperature stays above 50 degrees, but they need the bright light of a south-facing window in winter.

Over-watering means death for kalanchoes. Allow them to get completely dry between waterings. You can put them outside during summer, but make sure they are under something – trees or other shelter – to slow the rain water before it hits them.

Kalanchoes naturally bloom in spring. If you want them to bloom in winter, you must stimulate the short days of winter by putting them in a closet with complete darkness for 14 hours a day and moving them out into bright light for 10 hours for six weeks. Water them even less during this period.

Once you see buds forming after the six weeks, bring them out into normal light.

If that is too much work, just keep them in a room you don’t use – where it will get the 14 hours of dark without you moving the plant – and it will bloom in the spring when it wants to.