thanks so much!! that was so helpful!! I’m in Boston so I’m sure that leaves a little bit to be desired for their springtime but it should warm up soon enough!!

Let's just say the Northeast isn't optimal desert rose climate and they need a little help and coddling. If it's any consolation, I'll run and take a current photo of mine--talk about sickly-looking! These are just the second-year plants (the larger ones live downstairs). If yours have leaves like this, it's completely normal. They've just broken dormancy, with the largest out by about 20 days.

In my case, they're under 32 watts of LED lighting, 16 full spectrum (395-800nm), 8 watts warm white, 8 watts cool white, on from 5 PM through 9 PM. The window faces south.

If it makes you feel better, mine get scraggly in the winter as well, and it just doesn’t get below 60 F here (normally not below upper 60s). This winter has been strange & we’ve had a bit more of a sustained cool nights period (instead of the typical one night), so I‘m just barely starting to get buds forming. Some photos. Warning: it isn’t pretty.

Yeah, Ariel, those just look terrible. I wish mine looked that awful. :-)

It's a terrible photo, but I think this one is muttering, "Save me."

Let me find the ones that are bad. We’ve apparently begun scale season.

Floral_UK taught me that baby wipes work like a charm on that.

Half bald (I know it needs more lechuza; the cleaning lady constantly spills it). (Also, sadly, that’s what terra cotta starts to look like in the tropics.)

Others

And this tall, skinny monstrosity

For scale, I use alcohol wipes as a spot treatment and biothrine flow as systemic because I have too many plants to rely on less drastic measures. I segregate the aloes and orchids on biothrine days & I would rather not use it, but sometimes we do things we don’t want to do.

No arguments there. Drastic times call for drastic measures and I'll never criticize--particularly not when you have the number of plants you do!

(And yes, your "horrible" plants still look better than my best at the moment!)

At the moment, I think these 3 are doing the best for me. But you can see that even they have some issues.

where are you.. big city name.. do you have a furnace running ... ???

how about a pic of your plants .. unless you changed your name.. none of the pix here are your plants.. right???

and you may as well add some facts for us to work with.. like watering protocol... fert... etc ... you dont give us many facts to speculate on ..

ken

Ken, do you see Ariel's extended ID? She's in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, so spring is not only well underway, winter is practically my April. It's 76 today with a low of 66.

Using the word "lechuza" was a dead giveaway on that. :-) To me, it's the Eastern Barn Owl, or a beautiful fairytale ("The Owl Woman").

I'm pretty sure she's spoken about her care regimen in the past, but my Swiss cheese memory is not regurgitating the accurate details. :-)

I think Ken was addressing Nick. I (he, not that it matters) think I’ve only posted photos of plants that are my own.

It is officially 78 F right now. The projected low is 67, but probably won’t get below 70 where I am.

Now I'm even more envious. It's 34. We're going to a low of 21. Wind chill, 17.

I grew up in DC. I do not miss that sort of winter weather, at all. I think if I ever move back to the US, I’ll have to go back to Miami again, or try Hawaii.