Keep Your Poinsettias and Get Big Beautiful Growth!

Hey, what's up, garden friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. Another day in the grow space, just making a mess. I have to stop doing that. When I say things like I made a mess, there are some people who get very upset with me, calling me irresponsible and you should clean. But I just finished potting something. It's messy. Calm your asses down. Anyways, I blended up some fresh potting mix over here and I have a couple poinsettias that need to be repotted. So I thought that I would pick up the camera and we could just, you know, we can just talk about it. Is that better? You know, it's not perfect, but I'm about to repot plants so it's gonna be more dirt. Okay, I've done this video on multiple occasions because I just feel like it needs to be refreshed every year but it's always gonna be pretty much the same information. You have one of these or some of them approaching mid-January. They might not be looking too high. Yeah, that's normal. Poinsettias, these are a type of euphorbia and they grow tropical. They look absolutely beautiful down in Southern California, making, you know, small trees. Whereas the rest of us, you know, we grow these as a house plant. But actually most of us don't grow them as a house plant because they tend to get tossed after the holidays. And you know, you do you. But I'm gonna make a few points here that might make you think, maybe I should hold onto it. So for starters, this lackluster look, that's normal. The plant's been doing its flowering thing. It's ready for a break. So while I know these look like dead, dying plants, they're not, they're just going into a little reset period. Now that doesn't mean that yours have to go into a reset period. I have some over on the, around the corner that are larger. I think they're an eight inch pots. About a foot and a half tall, maybe. Those are still fully full of leaves and looking pretty good. I could just leave them. I will probably end up repotting those and then just cutting off the very tips or cutting them down to about 50%. Sometimes I'll even cut them down to just being a nub. Like that, right there. See that? Cut it back by two thirds and they'll flush out in a few weeks and just have tons and tons of nice full branches on them. The more branches you have, the more flowers you'll have next year. They like an organically rich, moist, well-drained soil. You know, yada, yada, yada. The typical plant care stuff. It being well-drained is particularly important though. I did not have like anything in that scoop. Instead, these are a euphorbia. They are succulent-esque in nature. They are succulents. And think about the places where they grow really well. They tend to grow really well in tropical to subtropical climates with nice rich soil, typically fairly sandy soil or rocky, gritty mix that just drains very, very fast. Doesn't mean it has to drain really fast. If you're in a tropical environment, the drainage is nowhere near as big of a deal as it is when you're talking about a more Mediterranean-style climate, like say California or in your house, right? Inside, temperatures are cooler. Maybe you'll have some place humid. My winter's air is fairly dry, but not as dry as a lot of y'all who comment on my videos. Typically around anywhere from 45 to 70% humidity. It just depends. So, you have options. You could just leave them like this as they are, reduce watering, keep them someplace where they'll still get some light, but it doesn't need to be beating down directly on them. And I would say only water them when they're like 50% dried out, maybe even more than that. You can let them dry out all the way once their leaves fall off, as long as they're stems. See those stems? As long as they're nice and firm looking. Bring it up closer so you can get a better look at them. The camera's not gonna focus on them. See how those are nice and firm? They're not shriveled, they aren't desiccated. They don't need water. If I were to keep watering this plant right now, it would rot and it would die. So that's one option. That's one way to keep them going is just let them hang out in a nice, cool location that's fairly brightly lit, but the sun's not beating right on them, and drastically reduce the amount of water that they're receiving. Another option is to keep them going business as usual. Go ahead and let them just keep growing and growing and growing. They will. They don't have to go into that more of a dormant, not really a dormancy, more of a resting period. They don't have to do that, though. But if you allow them to, at least my experience, when you have them indoors, it just makes life a lot easier. But if you wanna keep them going, maybe the ones you have are just doing great and they don't look like they are falling into any type of defoliation, then just keep doing what you're doing, basically. I would say let the top few inches of soil dry out. Some people, I guess it depends on your climate. If you live in a very dry climate, you're gonna wanna keep that soil consistently moist. I'm talking about your humidity, that is. And if you live someplace like me where we have pretty average humidity during the wintertime, I like to let these dry out, even when I'm keeping them going, usually at least by a third, if not 50% of the way. And watering is one of those things where you just, you gotta get to know your plants. It just takes time sometimes. It's gonna bother me that I said it takes time sometimes. If you ever do that, you get hung up on your words and things become counterproductive. Watch the plants, get to learn their habits and their patterns, and see how frequently you're needing to water them. It's pretty difficult with plant videos to say, here's how often you should water this plant. Because while it might work for me to allow this plant to dry out by, like I said, up to 50%, if not more, once they've established themselves into their new container, that could just be the complete and total kiss of death for somebody who lives in a climate where the air is really, really dry. You might need to keep things more moist. But if you just let them do the dormant thing, like I was talking about, you don't have to worry about that as much. Just give them a drink occasionally, as long as they aren't in any kind of active growth. You don't see any bud swelling. You don't really need to worry about them. Don't let them sit in water. They will rot and they will die. They definitely do not want to ever be sitting in water. Anaerobic activity just destroys the biological colonies around their roots and they rot away and they die. Don't want that to happen. They are sometimes more susceptible than other plants to having damage from being close to drafts. Just good houseplant care in general to make sure that you don't have things sitting too close to a vent or too strong drafts. If you live someplace really cold, probably don't want these near your doors either. They're gonna be opening and closing your exterior doors, that is. And yeah, otherwise, they're pretty simple. The main thing is always just getting down the watering if you're trying to keep them growing actively. Instead, if you're just letting them do their thing where they drop their leaves, not as much to worry about. So this is when I come in and I give them a very, very, very big cutback, being mindful of the sap, because that is a skin and an eye irritant. That's gonna cut that entire piece off right there. I know, it's shocking, I know. But it's going to be okay. This one I'm going to cut up higher. That can go higher than that one. Actually, no, I'll just take it down the same amount. Something to watch out for is the hollowness inside of those stems. You see that? I have a whole bunch of sap on my finger and had to rinse it off. The way these are hollow in the middle. So if you water from above and water gets down into these hollow pieces, then you could rot the plant out. So be careful, make sure that you're only watering around the edge of that plant once you've made those cuts up there. And this has just been opened up to, well, bugs and moisture, all kinds of things could happen. I'm gonna be putting these underneath some grow lights. So they should actually wake up now and that should encourage them to bush out since they've been cut back and repotted and they should be, you know, nice and big, like way up here by the time summer comes around. Poinsettias can grow very, very, very quickly. One thing I do like about them is that they make a really good filler plant in the garden. You can keep these and just grow them as you would an annual, maybe you don't want to try and get it to flower and bring it inside. I rarely do that. I usually just keep them going like this. I'll either put them over in the corner of the garage where it's dark and cool, and let them just hang out as they are or move them over to my grow shelves over here, give them some water and let them flush out and then encourage them to become much bigger, more full plants. The way these grow, if temperature, not temperatures, well, yeah, temperatures, but if conditions are ideal, these will be big enough to be bumped up into a 10 inch container within probably, I'd say 10 to 12 weeks. They grow very, very quickly. By the end of this year, by my growing season, that is, the end of my growing season, I would expect these two little guys to be probably about close to three feet tall, between 30 inches and three feet tall. They'll put on that size in a single season. You can stick them out in your garden in a nice, very sunny location. Generally good to make sure they have lots of airflow around them because I have noticed powdery mildew can be a problem, at least in my yard. I don't have quite as much sun. If I had full sun, I don't know if that would be an issue. And they just make for a really nice green full bush, basically. If you want to keep them in the containers, totally an option. Just, you know, gotta follow their care and everything. Throughout the summer, they're gonna want a lot more water when the day lengths are longer, when temperatures are warmer, right? And they can be heavy feeders too. So wanna keep that in mind, probably fertilize them at least monthly with a continuous release and the liquid fertilizer, and then be prepared to, I guess I'm gonna say, transition them into darkness for their blooming. People do that different ways. I've tried a few. They've all worked for me. A lot of people stay like 12 hours a day in a closet. Take the entire plant, you know, when it's nice and green and full of leaves, and stick it in the closet for like 12 hours a day, or put a paper bag over it for 12 hours a day. And I have found that typically where I live, my seasonal change is usually enough to go ahead and spur them to darken up and start to flower. If that's not the case for you, maybe you take them from being in the sun and put them on a porch, put them someplace where they're going to get shade for the bulk of the day, and those get a little bit of morning light. And sometimes that's all it takes to encourage the flowering. And then remember that this, not that it really matters. This isn't a biology or a horticulture class here, but these right here are not flowers. These are leaves. The flower is right in there. Those are the flowers. These are the leaves, right? So just making that clarification. Sometimes people like to make sure that I've said that. If that matters to you, now you know. I should probably mention that you don't have to give them that cut back. That's just what I do, because they're about to go underneath my grow lights, and I want them to flush out and push their roots out, become nice and bushy. If yours have just died back and they barely have any of these leaves left on them, you can just leave them be. They'll keep dropping their leaves as long as those stems stay nice and plump, like I showed you before, and they aren't shriveling up. So see it nice and plump. No shrivel. Then the plant's going to be okay. You want that to be nice and green and firm. The biggest issue that people have with their poinsettias always comes down to watering and the plant's rotting. So the best thing you can do is, I would say it lessens more with the water. I would much rather have a very dehydrated plant than an overwatered plant. It's a lot easier to rehydrate the plant and bring it back than to have to deal with the plant rotting from too much water. That's a whole entire thing. But if you just let it, go ahead and just droop a little bit, give it a small drink, let it perfect up, and you can get to know the rhythm that you need to be following in order to keep the plant growing and thriving. I have found these to be prone to pests, particularly aphids and whitefly. So that's another reason I do like to cut them back. It's just one less thing I have to worry about out here in the growth space. I could come in here, and I probably should do this, and just take a damp q-tip, a cotton swab, put it in some cinnamon, and pop that on the ends of each one of these cuts right here. That's going to start to dry them up. Once those are dried up, then you could go ahead and put just a little drop of wax, candle wax, on each one of those tips. That's going to help seal them up so that moisture's not traveling down inside there. That's always my biggest thing with these is when I cut them back, those hollow stems, I just forget when I'm watering, and that gets in there, and then the plant starts to rot away. They really are fun, fast-growing plants. I find them to be very rewarding because of that speed of growth that you get. It would be kind of cool if the garden centers would sell some poinsettias during the late spring when all the rest of the annuals and the tropical plants are out, because you can't just stick them out in the landscape, and they will grow and grow and grow, and that is just, it's fun to have things that put on lots and lots of growth very, very quickly. And like I said, if you have them in a container and it's easy to move someplace that's darker, probably around, I would say, late September to October, depending on where you live. These don't like frost. They don't really even like cool temperatures, so I would move them in when the temperature's around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. They're gonna be more prone to rot, so the cooler it is, the more dry you want to make sure everything is around the plant, the soil. Don't want wet soil and cold temperatures. They'll just die. Did I say cold soil and wet temperatures? Opposite, I meant the opposite. Wet soil and cold temperatures, bad idea. They will just rot, rot, rot, rot, rot. I don't know if you noticed, there's a theme here, and it's that these guys like to rot. Keep them more on the dry side and everything will probably be fine. If you live someplace where that's not going to work, you'll notice by how frequently they're drooping. And if you're watering them a lot and they're still drooping, you might just want to check out what's going on down there in the soil. Make sure that they haven't been over-watered because that can still cause them to droop. Over-watering and under-watering, sometimes the plant will show the same symptoms, so look out for foul odors. That can mean there's some kind of root rot. And just, you can check the firmness of the container sometimes and tell whether or not the plant has become root-bound. These do need to be bumped up into larger containers fairly frequently, probably two to three times a year, depending on how you're growing them and everything. But if they're growing really, really vigorously, generally two to three times a year until they've reached a size where they start to slow down. And they can get quite large. Like I said, in Southern California, I see these in people's yards in San Diego up to, you know, the Newport area. I'm sure they're up further than that too, but that's where I've noticed them the most. And they're just like a small tree in the front yard, really, really big, for something that we just get as these little plants that are anywhere from, what were these, six inches tall to maybe three to four feet tall on the larger end. Now, they'll get way bigger than that and they can do it fairly quickly. And yeah, I would only do that drastic cutback if you're about to stick them underneath some very bright lights and try and resume their growth. There's really not a reason to do that if you're just trying to keep them dormant, but you can just be careful that no water gets inside of there, because it'll be bad. Best to give them the cutback right when they're starting to wake up and you're starting to notice some active growth from the plant. You can see there's like right there, you'll see that in that little node area. That's the base of a leaf, but just pretend that that's a budding leaf. These little bumps right here, they'll start to swell. You'll see some green coming out. That's a good time to go ahead and cut them back and get them to bush back out. I'm gonna take these over to my grow shelves. Hopefully I have some room for them. These would do well down with my succulents, but I just worry that down here, I'm gonna have a harder time controlling the water and making sure that water doesn't get into those centers. I really should do the wax thing. I try and remember that I need to get in there with some wax, gets out onto those tips. Although I really, I'm not trying that hard to keep these going. Some of those things where I just do it to give them a chance. And if it works out, it works out. And then I have a fun, nice green bushy plant to fill in some gaps in the garden that year, or I don't. And then, you know, buy some new ones. But ideally, I like to try, right? I'm just gonna throw that money down the drain to really want to treat them as annuals when they can be grown as houseplants. It just, it requires a little bit more effort than say, you know, your snake plants or your ZZ plants. Okay, hey, that's gonna do it. Hope everybody's doing well. Hope you're having a great day, a great life and everything's just going absolutely beautifully for you. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye-bye.