Would you like to grow your poinsettia on after the Holiday, but you're not sure how? Keep reading.

These instructions are for temperate California or other warm areas. They are a bit long but useful.

Not you Ohio or Minnesota or ?

This is probably how your poinsettia is looking sometime in January. It will have lost some of its leaves. More or less than what you see here. This one looks pretty good.The center true flowers will long since have finished.

What about putting these outside? OK if you have a reasonably sheltered spot out of strong winds. Watch out for frosty nights and Santa Ana Winds. The best place is always in a bright spot indoors but your plants will last well past Christmas with any reasonably good care. After the holidays choose a sheltered spot for holding your plants til cut back time.

Remember that the first thing to go is the real true flower in the center of the bracts. The next to go are the green leaves. If you allowed your plant to dry out to the point of wilting it has almost surely lost almost all of its leaves by now. The same with sitting in water. Both are bad but the worst is sitting in water. If your plant has been sitting in water then you will probably loose it. Sorry! Look at the root rot lesson at the end of this page.

This picture shows a poinsettia that was allowed to dry to the point of the leaves wilting. In this case, even though I was touching the soil with my fingers and it felt cool and damp, it really wasn't. By the time I really checked the soil it was really dry. Most of the leaves were drooping and they quickly all fell off. Now I only have the bracts and stems left.
Keep ReadingWe hope your plant looks somewhat better than these after the Holidays. The better the plant is the more chances you have to grow it on after Christmas.

If you want to grow your poinsettia on and try to bloom it next year for Christmas then you must cut the blooms off. The best time to do this is the end of March. By then the soil and air temperatures are beginning to warm up. You should also be really tired of that scraggly poinsettia. I'm putting this up on the page now so you will know the drill but don't go cutting back yet.
The first thing you need to do is get the timing right. Cut it back too soon and it may die from the chills. Usually you cut back in March. Saint Patrick's Day is a good time and it helps you to remember if you do everything on holidays. It's a holiday plant---cut back on St Patricks Day, cut it back some more on July 4th. The reason you want to cut it back again on the 4th of July is to control the height. This is the only thing that you can do to keep your poinsettia from getting too tall. If you are going to plant it in the garden it is not so important to control the height. If you are keeping it in a pot then you do want to have the plant somewhat in balance.

If you are planning on planting your poinsettia out into the garden the best time is sometime in April.

Let's go back to cutting your poinsettia back on St Patricks Day. This is how you do it You can see that I have just chopped away at the plant. We like to leave about 4 to 6 inches on the plant. It's OK. to not have any leaves left. Lots of poinsettias will be leafless by mid-March.

Can you see the big pile of stuff we cut off?
You are going to let your poinsettia plant rest for a week or two. Maybe a little water, maybe not if it isn't dry. Put it in a nice warm sunny spot. Soon you should see new leaves coming out of the old stems. That's the signal that your plant is ready to grow again. Now you can give it a light fertilization. We don't want to give poinsettias too much nitrogen.

To make your poinsettia bloom by early December. Enter Patty Poinsettia
Now it is time to give your poinsettia a name and start doing the 'Day Length' thing. . Give it a name. I usually name mine Patty. Poinsettias need about 12 hours of complete darkness every night for about 2 months. Every variety of poinsettia is different. Some of the newer varieties like Freedom will bloom earlier with fewer hours of darkness. Remember that on September 21st there are 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of day light. That's what makes all the outdoor poinsettias bloom for Christmas. You would like yours a little earlier so you'll do the closet bit.

. Poinsettias also need to have it nice and cozy warm in order to bloom at just the right time. In the greenhouses that means a night temperature that doesn't go below 60. Growers track the height and development very very closely. We also use chemicals that will keep the poinsettia shorter. Very tricky! Too much and your poinsettia will be a real dwarf. Too little or too late and your poinsettias will be tall and ugly.

Back to you and your attempts to be a grower. Your plant has grown by leaps and bounds all summer long. You've battled whiteflies and almost kept them away. Now it is September and we want you to be alert for mildew. Poinsettias of old did not seem to get mildew, but with the newer varieties mildew is becoming a more common problem. Go ahead and spray with a good fungicide. It is always a good idea to test out a little of the spray first.

Starting sometime in the beginning of September you want to begin putting Patty to bed early every night, about five P.M. or so. Choose a time when you always do something. The first commercial break during the five o'clock news or after your glass of wine or cup of coffee. Take Patty and put her into the closet or if she is bigger you'll put a box over her. Say "Good Night Patty", close the door and let Patty sleep. In the morning take Patty out of the closet, set her on the table and say "Good Morning Patty. How did you sleep? Would you like some water? "
Put Patty outside to play for the day. Every other Sunday Patty gets to have Sunday Brunch with all of you. You fix all sorts of good stuff for yourself to eat and Patty gets a little diluted liquid fertilizer. If you keep this up sometime in late November you should begin to see those green leaves start to turn red. You can take Patty out of the closet then and keep her in a nice warm bright sun spot. the bracts turn bright red or pink or what ever color they are quite quickly and soon you have your very own poinsettia in full bloom. Congratulations!

I am going to put another learning lesson in here. Poinsettia root rot . The basics apply to all plants but since there was such a good example right in my own house we're using this one. Since I have nothing to sell on this site, I might as well try to teach.
If you like the lessons let me know. Feel free to make suggestions. The lessons are here for you. We don't try to be fancy but we do want it to be helpful. I write and do what I can and then web-master-teacher Tom Powell comes along and fixes what I didn't do right.
Back to the lessonLook at the picture of the basket poinsettia. Can you see the part of the plant that is wilted in front of the basket? Look at it closely and get familiar with the wilted look. The soil is wet so it isn't wilting from being dry. It is wilting because the roots have become diseased with one of the root rots. Usually from too much water, but sometimes it just happens. Like you get the flu and your spouse doesn't . You didn't do anything wrong, just unlucky.

When the roots become diseased they can no longer take up water and the plant wilts

Look at the two sets of roots. I took the plant apart to show you. The one on the left is healthy and the one on the right is diseased. If you could hold them in your hand you could feel the bad roots and see how the root shield is all rotted and brown. Good roots usually look like the left. Sick ones like the right.
So what can you do? At that stage, nothing. That plant is a goner!! You could hold back on the water or treating with the correct fungicide might save the others. In this case, the cost would be greater than the benefit. However, if you have the same problem in your garden with more valuable plants then follow the directions below.

If it is an expensive plant in your garden consult your farm and home advisor for what you can use. If it's just another plant then throw it away and don't use the soil or the pot again. The pot can be cleaned with a disinfectant like Clorox and water. Ask your farm advisor or your nursery expert. Prevention is always best. This isn't meant to really educate you, only to give you some garden clues.

Keep watching this page as we'll add more pictures as the poinsettia in my pot starts to grow. P.S. That's what I said last year when I wrote some of this. I put my cutback poinsettias outdoors along with some other plants. Then I had some work done on my front yard and of course the poinsettias were thrown away. Too bad. I'll try to do better this year.

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