Hello

So let me give u some background first- I get "sickly" plants from a local store for free-so none of my plants are exactly happy to begin with (It's not me who's killing them!!! I swear! I DO NOT have a black thumb! ) Recently I acquired some Kalanchoes- 1 was small and 2 were big. The big ones kept on flowering up until this very minute, and the flowers have been drying and dying- which is fine, cuz that's what flowers do. But every time I prune back the stems to the nearest leaf, they just look more and more sparse. Also, some areas of the stems are turning black-it doesn't seem to hurt the rest of the plant and the tissue under the black spots doesn't seem any weaker than the green areas, but I cut it back anyway, just in case. Wow, that was a run-on sentence. Am I doing something wrong? Should they keep blooming? Should I be cutting the stems back all the way instead of just to the first leaf? New growth HAS been showing up, so i know they are not dying before my eyes. But any help would be appreciated!