Last Christmas, we got a poinsettia. You can see it in this post. You will note that in that post, I talk about wanting, among other things, a jumbo poinsettia.

I have always wanted to grow my own poinsettia. Most people I have talked to tell me it can’t be done. Others have told me it can be done, but it is a little tricky. Some research revealed there are two tricks to holding a poinsettia over from one Christmas to the next. The first trick is keeping it alive. The second trick is making it bloom.

It seems poinsettias go dormant about the time they finish achieving full color, and they stay largely dormant until about March – even indoors. Because they are dormant, they tend to get over-watered which causes root-rot. The other issue is that the owners – observing no growth between December and March, and often substantial loss of leaves in that same time frame – conclude the plant is dead or dying. In fact, it is just dormant and losing leaves while dormant is pretty normal.

I was very careful not to over-water my poinsettia. I didn’t learn about the dormancy until after the poinsettia started growing out again in April, but I understand, now, why it seemed so slow.

The other trick is convincing the poinsettia to bloom. Poinsettias start blooming when the days get short. You can force blooming by putting the poinsettia in a dark place for 14-15 hours/day. Easier said than done. It seems that any little light at the wrong time interrupts the photoperiod and resets the poinsettia’s clock. Some websites I read suggested keeping the poinsettia covered for 40 days. Others suggested as little as two weeks. Given what I know about plant biology, I would guess two weeks is sufficient to trigger the blooming process if it’s the right two weeks and uninterrupted. However, to be safe, we started covering our poinsettia the first week in October. We covered the plant every day at 5:00 PM. Every morning we uncovered the plant at 8:00 AM. We stopped covering the plant on November 15.

Here is the poinsettia on November 16. Yes, this is the exact same plant. Note the beginnings of color on the leaf.

And above is the plant this morning. Note the fully developed color. Right now, the colored leaves are smaller and not as numerous as the poinsettias I am looking at in the stores. I don’t know if this will change as the colored leaves grow, or if there is some additional trick to get move of the leaves to turn red. Since removing the light cover from the poinsettia, I have read something about pinching it back. I have to find out the details.

I’m excited that we got our poinsettia to make this much color. If the leaves get big and we get more color – great! If not, we still got it to turn red and we can think about more tricks to make more color next year. In the meantime, meeting the challenge and seeing the plant turn color has been a lot of fun. The triumph of having teh poinsettia bloom simply increases the beauty the plant adds to our home.