Poinsettias
By Jo Prevatte: How do I get new poinsettias from existing plants? Answer By The Flower Expert: Poinsettias are short-day plants.To rebloom your existing poinsettia by Christmas, you need to expose it to natural day lengths from that point on. That means no extra light because excess light delays blooming (and the turning of green bracts to red).Poinsettias are temporary houseplants purchased before the holidays in full bloom and discarded after New Year’s Day. They can be kept and induced to bloom again the following winter, but this is a difficult process. To make poinsettia bloom for the next holiday season, propagation of the plant is necessary. You must take some special steps because of the sticky latex inside the stems.Keep the plant alive through the winter and into spring. The best time to begin propagation is in the spring.Cut a three- to six-inch section of the stem way from the end of a branch. Remove the bottom set of leaves from the cutting. If you intend to keep the parent plant, mist the area where you took the cutting with water to help prevent excessive sap from leaking out of the plant.Dip the tip of the cutting in a jar of water to help prevent sap from leaking out of the stem.Fill a three-inch pot with a mixture of sand and perlite. Then add a half inch layer of sand to the top of the mixture. The sand helps prevent the propagation from rotting.Add some rooting hormone powder to the tip of the poinsettia cutting and insert it into the potting mixture. Water the propagation well at first. After the first watering, water only when the potting mix dries out. Too much water can cause stem rot.Wait about two months for the poinsettia propagation to take root. When new growth appears, treat the poinsettia as a mature plant.
original article
January 20th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Oh no. Are you saying I’ll never see the red blooms again unless I propagate the plant? That’s sad. Won’t fertilizers do the trick?