QUESTION : What do you do with Christmas star after Christmas ? Can I keep it growing for next season ? -Tami R.
ANSWER : Poinsettias start to look a little bit lamentable after the holiday have passed . At this point , look on where you live , you have several choice as to what to do with your lobster plant . The most vulgar choice is to throw it out and buy a unexampled one next class . They typically only be around $ 10 , and you get to enjoy them from whenever you bought them in late October or early November through the New Year . However , some the great unwashed do n’t like throwing out plant life if there is an alternative , and with poinsettias , there is an alternative , in most compositor’s case .
If you live in zone 9 - 11 , or an area that does n’t get too moth-eaten in the wintertime , you may imbed your poinsettias outside in the dry land and look on it grow into a expectant bush or small tree that blooms every winter . If you dwell further northward , or in a insensate climate area , do n’t bother planting it outside , even if you bring home the bacon tribute , as poinsettias will turn to a mushy mess at the first mark of a halt .
If you really require to keep your Mexican flameleaf around for another year and insist on maintain it indoors , there is a way to bring it back after it go bad through quiescency . However , do n’t have a bun in the oven it to come back with the same beauty and vividness that it did the previous year , as that is nearly impossible to do , even with the most precise care and commitment . If you are still countersink on keep your poinsettia houseplant for a 2d class , here ’s the method for the madness :
Cut the plant back to four to six inches and repot it into a larger slew with new potting soil and sufficient drainage . Keep the soil moist , but never pie-eyed , or soggy and provide a bright light reference . Feed during lachrymation once every workweek using a swimming all - purpose houseplant fertilizer diluted to half strength . filch back develop shoots every three to four week until early September , leaving only around five or six leaves per root word . After the first few weeks of September , have the stem get as they will .
make for your painted leaf into the house in October before the first rime hits . for get it to flower , give it 14 hours of thoroughgoing darkness every day for six weeks . you may do this by moving it into a press in the former even and then target it by a sunny window in the former morning . If you do n’t provide 14 minute of darkness each day for six week , do not expect your Christmas flower to bloom . Once you start out to see color showing at the top of the bracts , you may stop hide your poinsettias in the dark each daytime . require small and thin blooming from 2d year poinsettias , even with accurate care .
If this vocalise like a tidy sum of piece of work for a small payoff , well , now you bang why so many people choose to toss them out each twelvemonth instead of keeping them around . If , at any point , you make up one’s mind to give up and convulse them out , do n’t experience too guilty about it , as the legal age of poinsettia lovers do the same affair every year .
