Poinsettia Update

The two poinsettias I kept from last Christmas spent the summer in a well protected, shady flower bed with an east exposure.  They lived happily among hostas, astilbe, violets, Jacob's ladder and other part sun, part shade plants.


Here's Zeke checking out a hosta with the two poinsettias in the background.

One of the poinsettias lost its leaves in April, I think because it didn't get watered on time. I trimmed it back to about six inches of stems, kept watering it and waited. By May it was sprouting new leaves.

The other plant kept its red leaves until I put both plants outside in June. Over the course of a month its shed its red leaves and put on new green leaves.

The plant that shed its leaves in April is now the smallest of the two but its new leaves seem bigger.

This is the largest plant, it kept its red leaves until the end of June.

I left the plants in their plastic pots and fed them some time release all purpose house plant fertilizer. That seemed to make them happy.

To keep the pots from falling over, I sunk them halfway in the garden soil and kept an kept watch on their water needs. When it wasn't raining every other day like it seemed to all summer, they needed watering a couple times a week but otherwise were easy care.  Neither showed any signs of disease or insect damage and they look nice in the garden.

Now its time to begin their light and dark treatment to attempt to get them to "bloom" for Christmas.
Beginning the first of September (and I've missed it by two weeks, but we go on anyway), they need twelve hours of dark and twelve hours of light each day.   As long as the weather holds I plan to cover them with black plastic garbage bags. From 7:00 pm until 7:00 am when I do my morning farm chores. There is no guarantee that I'll have red poinsettias at Christmas, but I think even if they remain green I will enjoy them as house plants this winter.