Poinsettia care for the holidays
By By Steve Strong / area horticulture extension agent
Dec. 17, 2003
Poinsettias are much tougher plants than most people give them credit for. Originally collected from the desert regions of Mexico during the early 1800s, these "flowers of the holy night" have been transformed from wild roadside weeds into cultivated and celebrated symbols of the Christmas season.
Plant breeders have improved varieties over the years to produce a wider array of colors with larger bracts and prolonged flowering, but the culture remains the same. Poinsettias are basically arid climate plants, and thus are well adapted to the low humidity found indoors. Watering can pose a challenge however, and gardeners must practice an even cycle of wet and dry to keep poinsettias happy.
Most of the plants are grown in fairly small containers of 8-inch diameter or less, and that allows the roots to dry more quickly after watering (this helps prevents root rot). The problem with watering usually arises from the decorative foil or plastic used to wrap the pots, which is watertight and does not allow moisture to drain away from the roots (this suffocates them from lack of oxygen).
One easy way to prevent over-watering is to simply pour off the excess a few minutes after watering thoroughly. You could also place some small gravel or coarse sand in the bottom of the wrapping to draw away some excess moisture if pouring off is not an option, but either method is a bit messy and requires maintenance.
Poinsettias need bright light to keep the colors vivid, but be careful about placing them in direct contact with cold windowpanes that could injure the foliage. The plants are best kept between room temperature and 55 degrees, with an evenly moist root system that can occasionally be left dry.
A few gardeners out there always try to keep poinsettias over the winter and have them bloom again next year, but that takes a little extra work. The plants must have a shortened day-length (less than 12 hours of sunlight) to stimulate flowering and bract coloring, and this means placing the plants in a dark closet (underneath a cardboard box or other covering) every evening from 5 p.m. until dawn for at least six weeks until color starts to show.
Experienced house plant growers will testify to the pest-magnet effect of poinsettias, prone to attack from whiteflies, mealy bugs and a host of other insects. They can be effectively controlled with a systemic granular pesticide sprinkled on the soil surface, or spray applications could also be used.
Rather than worry about the extra headache of over-wintering them or spending extra money on pesticides, many holiday plant lovers will choose to enjoy them for the discount holiday bargain they are. Simply toss them in the lawn refuse bound for the county landfill, and enjoy them again next fall as seedlings popped up in the compost collected for the veggie garden.
This close to Christmas, most poinsettias are marked down to discount, and a personal friend of mine who plants the earth pretty regularly swears by the variety Winter Rose. The large flowering Pepride is another great cheery red choice, and there are countless choices of pinks, yellows and whites on the market, too.
Check with your county Extension office for more information on holiday plant care, and visit the Mississippi State University Web site at www.msucares.com.
