Saving Your Holiday Plants

What member of any Texoma household is most likely to be thrown out with the gift wrap, once the holidays are over? Probably not the dog or cat. Neither of them would sit still for such treatment. But the poinsettias, now, especially that pinky one with the chartreuse blotches, well, you’d have to have a really green thumb to pull an exotic plant like that through the next eleven months and re-bloom it again next winter. So just let it lose its leaves and turn into a dry, brown stick, and then you’ll be perfectly justified in throwing it out.

And what about the amaryllis that sent up one stalk and put out one bloom, but boy, it was a zinger? Or the paper-white narcissus whose blossoms perfumed the whole house for a while but whose scent is now wandering down the lane toward run-over skunk?
Is the garbage can the only fate for them? Not necessarily. Many of the flowering plants we associate with the holidays will bloom again next year, if we invite them to stay and make them comfortable. And some, like the amaryllis, only get better with age.

So, after the holiday excitement dies down, peel that ratty gold wrap off the holiday plants, and look them over. Set the paper-white bulbs aside for planting in an outdoor bed. Snip off spent flowers and dried-out stems from the other plants. Check all pots for good drainage. Repot if they seem crowded. And get ready to treat these exotic specimens like plain old “potted plants.” Except for some of their eccentric light requirements, but we’ll get to that.

For most of the year, they will need about six hours of strong but indirect sunlight every day, just like your devil’s ivy. They will perform best where temperatures range between fifty-five and seventy degrees and they are sheltered from direct heat or moving air, which means away from the fireplace and the ventilating ducts. They will enjoy soil that stays moist but never wet and a sip of fertilizer about once a month, while they are not in bloom. Your regular household fertilizer will be fine. Just mix it half strength.

Let your poinsettia or amaryllis enjoy its ideal location in your home until night temperatures reach fifty-five degrees outside in the spring. Then you can set both plant pots in a protected spot outdoors, and they can spend the summer there. The Christmas cactus can join them. Cut the poinsettia back to about eight inches at the end of March, and fertilize it. Re-pot it in June and prune it to shape. You can whack on it a little now and then, to help it maintain the shape you want, until mid September. At that point, you’ll bring poinsettia and amaryllis back inside for a period of rest. Leave the Christmas cactus outside, or maybe on the porch, until frost threatens. Once you bring it back into a warm environment, it will start to set buds.

Find a cool, dry, dark spot inside for the amaryllis to rest in, and quit watering it. As leaves yellow or die, snip them away. After about two months, the bulb should be sending out new shoots. Even if it isn’t, go ahead and move the pot into a warmer, brighter place and give it a thorough watering. If you want to repot it, now is the time. Expect blooms in six to eight weeks.

The poinsettia is a little needier. About here is where some gardeners start to think their time is worth more than the few dollars poinsettias cost these days, even the big blotchy ones, and you begin to hear muttering about never intending to adopt the wretched thing.

In order to color the poinsettia up again for the holidays, you’ll need a dark closet or unused guest room, where it can rest in total darkness for fourteen continuous hours every night, beginning about October 1, and be returned to the indirect sunlight it needs during the day. One effective way to maintain the darkness until it starts to show its holiday colors is to put a cardboard box over it at night and take it off each morning. For ten weeks.

That means that twice a day, every day, you have to think about the poinsettia. Box on for fourteen hours. Box off for ten hours. The whole project will work only if the plant has this undisturbed, light-free rest at night and bright light during the day. You can’t put it where it will get rays from a streetlight through a window or in the hall closet where people will be hanging coats at night.

By the time this plant begins to sport pinky leaves with chartreuse blotches in November or December and your friends and family are gushing over both it and your gardening skills, you will have proven that holiday plants don’t have to be tossed out with the post-season trash. Even poinsettias. Or not.

The Science of the Poinsettia

Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are popular potted plants, particularly during Christmas. Brightly colored, mostly red, Poinsettia provides effective color in home decor during and after the holiday season. The newer Poinsettia cultivars are long-lasting in contrast to the cultivars that were available a few years ago. Christmas charm is what these amazing Poinsettias hold.

Kingdom: Plantae; Division: Magnoliophyta; Class: Magnoliopsida; Order: Malpighiales; Family: Euphorbiaceae
Genus Euphorbia; Species: pulcherrima