Poinsettias are one of my favorite holiday decorations, especially in the winter. Fun colors include red, pink, white, cream and variegated apricots, among other options. Poinsettias come in almost a hundred different kinds. I prefer the classic red, but you may go all out with your Christmas decorations if you want to.
There is only one drawback to poinsettias: they lose their “blooms” after roughly four to six weeks. So, I tried a small experiment to see if I could get my poinsettias to re-grow their bright red color. This is a great time of year for in-home gardening projects, so let’s figure out how to make a poinsettia turn red.
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If you still have questions about poinsettias after reading this, I’ve answered some of them in the comments.
Why is My Poinsettia Not Turning Red?
Poinsettias are unique in that the blooms do not contain any pigment; instead, the color is found in the bracts, which are modified leaves. The flowers are little in the centre. The plant’s leaves become crimson when it begins to produce blossoms. Pollinators are drawn to the tiny yellow flowers by the crimson foliage. The leaf bracts come off once the flowers have faded. It’s only a matter of time before the green leaves fall.
To get your poinsettia to redden up, you’ll need to put some pressure on it. There is a little help needed to keep the bracts on the poinsettia plant from fading.
How Do You Force a Poinsettia To Turn Red?
Do you want to know how to “rebloom” a poinsettia? It’s not an easy process, and poinsettias need a little tender loving care in order to thrive. This advice helped me get my poinsettia to bloom again and keep it healthy for the foreseeable future.
Anyone who enjoys using live plants in their holiday decor, such as gardeners, will appreciate a poinsettia arrangement as a present. Even Christmas plants are now available to purchase online.
How Do You Keep a Poinsettia From Year to Year?
To adorn my home for the holidays, I always buy a couple of poinsettias each year. Since I wanted to have them ready for the next holiday season, I opted to keep them alive all year long. Having done some digging, here’s what I found out about the subject.
- Ensure that the plant receives at least 8 hours of bright light each day, but not direct sunlight.
- Maintain a temperature of at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the room where the plant lives. 60 to 70F is excellent.
- Allow the soil to dry out between waterings, but don’t wait so long that the leaves begin to wilt and die.
- Feed once a month with a water-soluble plant food, except when the plant is blooming.
- The plant’s blooms can remain for months, but ultimately they will fall off. So will the plant’s leaves. It’s time to cut it back. Routine plant care includes pruning all stems to a length of six inches or less. New leaf growth is imminent. Next year’s poinsettia will be sprouting from that fresh growth.
Where Did the Poinsettia Come From?
Take a look at where the poinsettia comes from in order to truly appreciate this plant. The poinsettia is indigenous to the region around southern Mexico and Central America. It was named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American who brought it to the United States in 1828. Poinsett was the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico with a passion for botany. In love with the shrub’s beautiful red blossoms, he sent some to his South Carolina home where they were successfully grown.
How To Get a Poinsettia To Turn Red
Take a look at where the poinsettia comes from in order to truly appreciate this plant. The poinsettia is indigenous to the region around southern Mexico and Central America. It was named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American who brought it to the United States in 1828. Poinsett was the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico with a passion for botany. In love with the shrub’s beautiful red blossoms, he sent some to his South Carolina home where they were successfully grown.
- To truly appreciate or understand this plant, it is necessary to look at where the poinsettia originates. Flora poinsettia is indigenous to the Central American region near Mexico. Joel Roberts Poinsett, a British immigrant to the United States in 1828, gave it its name. Poinsett was the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico with an interest for botany. The vivid red blossoms of this shrub charmed him so much that he sent some to his South Carolina home for propagation.
- After a long day of sunlight, the plant should be kept in total darkness at night. In the same location as your mushroom log, if you’d like.
- Even a modest night light or street light streaming through a window might disturb the process of turning a poinsettia red once more.
- During this time, the plant will want a little extra humidity. Keep in mind that it’s from Mexico’s southern region! Place the poinsettia in a closed closet with water every night to help it turn red. Make sure the closet door is never opened. As the water bowl fills up, the closet’s air will get more humid.
- In about four weeks the bracts will begin to turn red. It will take another four weeks of nightly darkness to get its full red color. And that’s how to make poinsettias turn red
How to Propagate a Poinsettia
In about four weeks the bracts will begin to turn red. It will take another four weeks of nightly darkness to get its full red color. And that’s how to make poinsettias turn red
When the bracts are around four weeks old, they’ll start to turn crimson. After four more weeks of nighttime darkness, the plant will have reached full red color. So there you have it: the secret of turning poinsettias crimson.
To create a new poinsettia from an old one, cut a sensitive growth of a terminal shoot from a herbaceous stem.
As a general guideline, this is what your cutting should look like.
- When propagating plants, cleanliness is always a priority, but this is especially true with poinsettias. Wipe down your knife and work surface with rubbing alcohol to ensure they are spotless.
- Cut stems from healthy plants that are in full bloom. Using the old stems that bloomed this year is a mistake. Cut back the old stems and maintain the parent plants warm, wet, and in a light area to encourage the growth of new stems. New cuttings can be taken when the new stems are about four inches long. Choose a healthy shoot and cut just below a node (the place where a leaf comes out) with a clean knife.
- Use stems that have been recently cut from strong plants. In this case, it is not recommended to use the old stems that bloomed this year as cuttings. The best way to get new stems is to prune back the old ones and maintain the parent plants warm, moist, and in a well-lit area. To propagate your plants, wait until they are four inches tall before taking additional cuttings. The node (the point where a leaf emerges from the stem) should be trimmed immediately below the healthy shoot.
- Leaves on the bottom half of the slip should be removed.
- Use a rooting compound according to the directions on the box/bottle. You may be tempted to skip this, but trust me, it makes a big difference! Get the rooting hormone.
- Make use of a rooting compound in accordance with the package or bottle’s instructions. Make no mistake, this is an essential part of the process! Get your hands on rooting hormone
As you can see, this is how your plastic bag arrangement should look.
- Using a 6- to 8-inch pot, fill it with organic potting soil and seal the container in a clear plastic bag to keep it moist. Keep out of direct sunlight and water, if necessary. ‘ Alternatively, instead of using a pot and soil, place each poinsettia cutting in a compressed peat pellet and store it in a plastic bag to preserve humidity.
- Soil or peat pellet rooting medium should always be kept moist. There is no method for your plant to get water because it lacks roots.
- Transplant the cutting into a new container when the roots are at least one inch long. Because the new poinsettia is still delicate, it should be watered frequently to prevent it from drying out completely — but also to prevent it from being drowned. Apply a soluble houseplant fertilizer as directed once it has established itself in the new pot. Then, fertilize the plants every month. Maintain regular maintenance for your new poinsettia by following the above instructions once it has begun to grow robustly.
Don’t throw your poinsettia away!
Too often, poinsettia has a sad fate once the party is over… and ends up in the trash (or, slightly better, the compost pile…)! Place it in a cool environment after blossoming and water it on a regular basis. Reduce irrigation in late April. The plant’s dormant phase begins when the leaves start to fall. Allow the soil to completely dry out for a month when this happens. Cut it back to a height of 4 inches (10 cm) and water it to initiate the growth phase. Once you’ve done that, place it somewhere warm.
Post-blooming Poinsettia care, a summary:
- A little water here and there will suffice until spring.
- Stop watering at the end of spring to encourage the fall of leaves. For a month, keep the soil completely dry.
- snip back the stems to around 4 inches in length.
- Once you’ve re-watered it, move it to a warmer location.
How to make poinsettia red again
Make sure the poinsettia’s leaves become red again for the second year running! During the shortest days of the year, these leaves are only visible. You must limit their exposure to light in order to turn them red. Place it in a naturally lit room as early as September and make sure it is completely dark for 14 hours out of a 24-hour period. For a total of eight weeks, stick with it!
Keep your plant in a closet from 6 pm to 8 am every day as an alternative method… It might also be covered in a carton box while it’s in storage. After the eight-week period is finished, you can resume usual care for your poinsettia. Sleeping at 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal for your pet at night. And, maybe, it will bloom once more around the holiday season.
Steps to make it bloom again in Winter:
In September, solely use natural light. For 14-hour evenings, make sure the place is completely dark. It’s best if the room is kept at a cool temperature.
Bring it into your living room in November and let it get used to the temperature. Because of this, the days will appear to be longer to the plant, leading to
What You May Not Know About Poinsettias
Because poinsettia plants are not just annuals or house plants, they deserve more attention than most people give them credit for. Plant hardiness zones 9 to 11 are appropriate for these deciduous shrubs, which can reach a height of 12 feet. Because of their short blooming period, this sort of plant is only suitable for a few weeks at a time.
The colors you see in poinsettias aren’t actually in the flowers, as you may have guessed from the name. The modified leaves, which are also known as bracts, that turn red in the fall are the flowers of the plant, which are those tiny yellow things in the center. As the plant develops blooms, the bracts’ hues shift.
Insect pollinators are drawn to the plant’s tiny yellow flowers in the center when the leaf bracts turn crimson. Flies, moths, beetles, ants, honey bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, wasps, and butterflies are some of the pollinators in this list. The red bracts and green leaves fall off shortly after the flowers have faded.
5 Tips on How to Keep Your Poinsettias Alive and Healthy from Year to Year
Perhaps you want to maintain your poinsettias alive and well so that you can have them ready for the upcoming holiday season in the spring of 2017. In order to accomplish this, follow these steps:
Tip #1: Keep it in bright light
Every day, ensure that the plant is exposed to a sufficient amount of bright light, but not direct sunlight. At least eight hours a day should be spent on this.
Tip #2: Keep them in areas where the temperature doesn’t go lower than 50˚F
It is necessary to keep the plant in a warm area or a little greenhouse where the temperature never drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 70 degrees Celsius).
Tip #3: The soil should be dried out between waterings
Allow the soil to dry completely in between waterings. However, if you don’t want the leaves to start wilting, don’t wait too long.
Tip #4: Feed it with water-soluble plant food at the right time
Once a month, feed your poinsettias with a water-soluble plant food. During the months when the plants are in full bloom, however, stay away from this practice.
Tip #5: Don’t forget to prune them
A few months after planting the plant, the plant’s blossoms and leaves will begin to fade. Pruning your plant is critical following this event.
Just clip the plant’s stems to about six inches as you continue with your regular plant care. Next winter, when fresh leaves begin to appear, patiently await.
4 Tips on How to Turn a Poinsettia Red
Every year, gardeners must learn to re-invigorate their prized poinsettias and get their leaf bracts to turn red again. Check out these must-have tips if you want to get yours to become red again and keep it healthy for a long time:
Tip #1: Place it in total darkness for 14 hours every day
As early as eight weeks before you plan to use them as holiday decorations, you may get your poinsettia’s leaf bracts bright red by keeping them in complete darkness for 14 hours a day.
The process of turning the bracts red again will be hampered if you have a little night light on in the same room as your poinsettias while they are intended to be in complete darkness. Your poinsettias will suffer the same fate if you leave a window open and let sunlight shine through.
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As a result, at night, it’s better to store the plants in a closet. Keep an eye on the closet and make sure no one opens it at night.
Tip #2: Increase the level of humidity
You need to realize that poinsettias need extra humidity while you’re trying to get them back to their original color. You may want to keep a bowl of water in the dark closet where you keep your plants every night in order to enhance the humidity level.
Tip #3: Expose it to bright light during the day
Make careful to expose your poinsettias to bright light throughout the day after putting them in complete darkness at night. You can maintain your poinsettias in the same place if you have a mushroom log.
Tip #4: Maintain the same routine until its red color is achieved
You must stick to your evening darkness schedule for at least four weeks or until the plant reaches a rich crimson hue you’ve always desired.
Grow Your Plants in a Hobby Greenhouse!
Using a hobby greenhouse to raise your plant babies is an excellent way to advance your gardening abilities. A hobby greenhouse not only provides an ideal climate for your plants to thrive, but it also shields them from harsh weather conditions and dangerous pests and animals. In addition, a hobby greenhouse allows you to lengthen the growing season of your plants.
After learning how to dye a poinsettia for this year’s Christmas decorations, you may grow them in your very own hobby greenhouse to ensure their long-term health. Create one right now!
Poinsettia FAQs
In a nutshell, here’s how to turn a poinsettia red:
How long does a poinsettia plant live?
The length of time a poinsettia will last is determined by the type of poinsettia you have and the care you give it.
However, with careful care, the plant will continue to grow for a long time after its brilliant bracts have faded.
How many hours of sunlight does a poinsettia need?
Sunlight is essential for your poinsettia. After a few weeks of darkness, begin the above-mentioned poinsettia blooming regiment.
When should I repot my poinsettia?
The new pot should not be wider than four inches than the old one when you re-pot in early June. Use a peat moss-based potting mix that is high in organic materials.
During the summer, potted poinsettias can be kept outside. In a wheelbarrow garden, they look excellent grouped together. Plants can be transplanted into the garden in frost-free areas.
How big do poinsettias get?
At 16 feet in height and 6-8 feet wide, poinsettias are the size of small trees. That’s where the plant comes from, in places like southern Mexico. Your poinsettia probably won’t get as big as it used to. Keep the size you want by cutting it back.
When should a poinsettia be cut back?
You may read about how to keep a poinsettia for years to come here. Cutting back a plant when it loses its leaves is a good idea.
Why are all the leaves falling off my poinsettia?
In the plant’s normal course, this happens. As soon as the flowers have bloomed, the leaves start to fall from the trees. It’s as simple as snipping back the plant’s stems.
Can I cover my poinsettia instead of putting it in a dark room?
As a substitute for the 14 hours of darkness it needs to turn its color, a cover should suffice. To prevent the poinsettia from being crushed, make sure that no light may enter the container and that the cover is well held up. An ordinary black trash bag should suffice.
Have you tried to care for a poinsettia year round and get it to turn red again? How did it go?
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