How to care for poinsettia so that it “lights up” for Christmas

It is easy to guess about the flowering period of poinsetia, knowing its middle name. Under favorable conditions, the plant blooms in late December or early January. Many mistakenly take the bright red stars towering above the green stems for flowers. And only attentive flower growers with experience know that the color of poinsetia is nondescript and shallow. And bright red something is bracts that frame a real flower.

What is the name of the winter flower? Another name for poinsetia is the most beautiful euphorbia. Varieties of plants, thanks to hardworking breeders, quite a lot. They tried their best, revealing to the world not only the scarlet Star of Bethlehem, but also varieties with apricot, creamy and even spotty colors. The homeland of poinsetia is called botany by Mexico. But today she is a true citizen of the world. You can see a Christmas star in winter not only on home windowsills. Designers are happy to decorate shop windows and tables in cafes, restaurants and pubs with pots with poinsettia. The plant is able to transform the atmosphere in the room, giving everyone around you a festive mood.

Varieties of Christmas star. Benefit and harm

Growing poinsetia at home begins with the choice of variety. The table lists the main breeding species of the Christmas star, each of which can settle in your house.

Table - Varieties of poinsettia

A distinctive feature of the Christmas star is its flexibility for selective breeding.Presented in the table is only a small fraction of all deduced varieties of poinsetia that flower growers can enjoy today.

How to choose a "festive" plant so that during the treepointessia blushed: 3 tips

The most difficult in the home life of the punchet is considered the adaptation period, when the flower is brought from the store to the apartment. Whether a plant quickly adapts to home conditions depends on how comfortable its transportation was before it went on sale. Your task is to choose from dozens of southerners looking at you from the window of the southerners the most healthy and viable plant. A competent approach will help you simplify the care of poinsettia after the purchase. There are three important points to consider when choosing.

1. Buy only at the store. The offer to buy the Star of Bethlehem in the market should be confidently refused. In winter, there is a risk of freezing of the roots. Without knowing this, you can buy a non-viable plant.
2. Potted soil. The soil should be slightly moistened. If it is too raw, there is a risk of root decay. Perhaps the plant was flooded.
3. Unblown buds. The life cycle of a Christmas star consists of three stages: flowering in the cold season, peace and growth period. If the buds on the selected plant have not yet had time to blossom, then the poinsettia at the beginning of its life cycle will have time to please its beauty with plenty.

Care for poinsettia at home. Signs and superstitions

Proper care Three weeks - just as much milk of beauty is required in order to get used to new living conditions. Knowing how to care for poinsettia, and following the rules, you can enjoy the colorful bracts for four months. Let's take it step by step.

Lighting and location

In summer, the flower enjoys long sunny days and prefers bright diffused lighting. A great place to deploy a Christmas star in the summer is a balcony or a location at the dacha porch. If you keep a Mexican woman at home during this period, often ventilate the room, but avoid drafts.

In winter, during the flowering period, the plant needs even more light. If you do not provide her with high-quality lighting, the leaves of a capricious southerner will instantly fall off. Cloudy weather outside the window is a signal to organize an artificial light source for a Christmas star.

Temperature

With temperature, things are somewhat simpler: at any time of the year, the regime in the range from 18 to 25 ° C will be comfortable for milkweed. Critically low during growth and flowering is considered a temperature below 14 ° C.

Beginning gardeners are often worried about the question of how to care for poinsettia (a Christmas star) after flowering, and what temperature regime it needs to provide. Reviews of experts suggest that the plant, which is in a dormant period, feels comfortable in the temperature range from 12 to 14 ° C.

Watering

In the hot season, watering should be frequent and quite plentiful. Dry topsoil is a hint that the plant needs moisture. In winter, watering should be minimized by moistening the soil in a pot no more than once every three to four weeks.

Humidity

A star of Bethlehem, like a person, feels most comfortable in a room where the humidity level fluctuates around 40-60%. Dry air is fraught with the appearance of pests. And excessive humidity - rotting of the root system.

Top dressing

Poinsetia fertilizer at any time of the year, except spring, must be carried out twice a week. During dormancy, after flowering southerner, dressing should be done no more than once a month. The table shows the types of fertilizer that a Christmas star needs depending on the season.

Table - Seasonal top dressing of poinsetia

Pruning

The Christmas star is growing rapidly, not only in breadth, but also up. In order for the miniature flower to not once turn into a giant that does not fit on the windowsill, the poinsettia must be cut off. Pruning is carried out after the indoor plant completes flowering - in March-April. The stems are cut radically, leaving green rods no more than 10 cm long in the pot. After pruning, the flower is left in a room with a comfortable temperature regime, watered and sprayed abundantly.

After a few weeks, new shoots will begin to appear on the trimmed plant. Your task is to leave five or six of the most viable and strong stems with leaves. The rest must be eliminated by re-trimming. Eliminated shoots can be rooted in the ground.

Transplant and soil

It is necessary to transplant a poinsetia into another pot annually. Do it by transshipment method. The most favorable period is late spring, not in the fall, as many do. Mexican beauty loves slightly acid soil. The approximate pH value (pH) is six. Land for transplanting plants can be purchased at the store, or you can cook it yourself according to the following recipe (in a ratio of 3: 2: 2: 1):

• clay-soddy soil;
• sheet soil;
• turf soil;
• sand.

Do not forget about drainage. If properly looked after, the flower will look like in the photo.

Reproduction of the southerner

Poinsettia cannot be propagated by seeds for two reasons. In domestic captivity, the plant rarely gives them. In addition, breeding varieties cannot be propagated by seed, because the seed does not preserve the characteristics of the variety. This means that the desire to "clone" the southerner sooner or later will make you take up the cuttings.

Cuttings

Propagation of poinsetia (Christmas star) by cuttings is carried out only in the warm season. The period from May to August is most suitable for “cloning”. Having broken off the shoot with the intention of using it as a planting material, do not forget to instantly put it in warm water. The stems of the Star of Bethlehem contain a milk-like juice. It is important that it does not leak out of the stem completely. We act in four stages.

1. Each stalk dipped in "Kornevin" (fertilizer-root-forming).
2. We plant two shoots in one pot to a depth of not more than 1 cm to eliminate the risk of decay.
3. We keep the planted cuttings in a room with a temperature of 24-29 ° C, often water and daily spray with warm water from a spray bottle.
4. After 21 days, we plant the cuttings in different pots.

Growing problems

Buying poinsettia, you need to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. The flower is very picky. Therefore, flower growers often encounter simple and not very problems growing it.

Disease

Any violation of the rules of care entails the "whims" of the Christmas star. The table shows the most common diseases with an indication of the causes of their occurrence. When identifying similar symptoms, your task is to provide the plant with surgical treatment, acting on the contrary.

Table - What and why is poinsetia sick

Do not be afraid if the poinsetia (bright bracts) has turned green. This is evidence that the flowering period has ended. After greening, the leaves will become pale, and then completely fall off. This is normal. If it’s time for a plant to bloom, but it doesn’t bloom, it means that in the recent past you could not properly arrange a dormant period for it. Sometimes the lack of flowering indicates that the florist has mixed up the fertilizing and gives the Mexican fertilizer for growth.

Pests

Violation of the rules for caring for a flower can not only shake the plant’s health, but also cause more serious misfortune - insect pests. The table lists the worst enemies of poinsetia and the symptoms of their defeat.

Table - Christmas Star Pests

A small number of pests can be removed by mechanical cleaning. Just rinse the sponge in clean water and carefully wipe each sheet of poinsetia, freeing it from bothersome small conquerors. For greater persuasiveness, wrap the pot in polyethylene and rinse the plant thoroughly in the shower, washing the leaves thoroughly, including from the back. If this does not help, use insecticides after receiving a preliminary consultation with a flower shop employee about diluting the medicine.

Growing poinsetia at home is not an easy job. But the result is really worth it. For observing the rules of care and care, the Mexican beauty will pay you back with a gold coin. She will bloom magnificently by the very eve of Christmas and will remain in her furious outfit until the Eighth of March. In the meantime, you can not only admire its flowering, but also actively use poinsetia as a living decor. A cache-pot with red stars towering above the dense green foliage will ideally fit into the interior of the living room decorated for the New Year or find its rightful place at the head of the Christmas table.

Check out the video on how to grow a Christmas flower properly.

Reviews: “A perfect gift for a friend under the Christmas tree”

She did nothing of the kind, only watered and sprayed! After flowering, the red leaves turned green and began to grow. In early December, small leaflets began to blush, buds and flowers appeared, in January she found a brush, put it on the street (−10 - −15), a week later brought it back (apparently the shield was frozen: it was sitting as if it were alive). Sprayed with chemicals. The flower "blooms and smells." No worries and problems !!! Buy and don’t freeze! This year, I can be cut off and give a rest ... If I do not forget !!! :)))

Zdravu_smusl, http://www.keepflowers.ru/poinsettia/

Poinsettia is a very beautiful flower. And if you believe the descriptions in various sources, he is not too difficult to care for, but personally I unfortunately did not manage to make friends with him. Poinsettia is sold in stores, usually in the winter, before the New Year holidays. Personally, at this moment I simply can’t pass by these flowers, because they look amazingly beautiful and are quite inexpensive. One flower costs about 100-150 rubles, and hands and reach for them to buy. Leaves of blooming poinsettia are red, pink and yellow. On sale, I met only the first two colors. And both of them visited me. I took pink poinsettia only once. I have been buying red for several years now. Red leaves against the dark green of the poinsettia look, of course, brighter and more spectacular. After buying the flowers, I transplant them into ordinary plastic pots. I take the universal earth. Watering as needed. Poinsettia does not like overflow, so I try not to moisten the earth too much. In a flowering beautiful state, a flower stands for a couple of months, gradually losing the lower, and then the upper, bright leaves. In the further development of events, options are possible. In general, our apartment has very dry air in the winter, and even the presence of a large aquarium (250 l) in the room where the flower is standing somehow does not save the situation much. A poinsettia, as it turned out, in dry air is very difficult. My first flower withered three months after the acquisition. First, the leaves fell, and then the shoots that appeared again. My second flower I bought was very protective. I tried to provide proper hydration of the leaves, made the recommended spring pruning, and he stood in my green form until the fall. But with the subsequent inclusion of heating, it also dried up. Therefore, I acquire all subsequent flowers with the thought that they will stay with me for a maximum of a couple of months, and treat them only as a beautiful, but temporary, decorative bouquet.

Ane4ka, http://irecommend.ru/content/dlya-menya-etot-tsvetok-odnorazovyi-polyubovalsya-paru-mesyatsev-i-vykinul

Going to visit a friend on the eve of the New Year's holiday, she was puzzled by the gift. Buy just a bauble with a symbol of the year? No, I don’t feel like it will be lying around. Sweets, champagne are commonplace. The gift should not be very expensive, not binding, but at the same time a pleasant look. Well, nothing comes to mind, I’m already starting to get nervous and then I hear the traditional heading about all sorts of useful and not very plants on Echo of Moscow. They say about the beautiful Poinsettia, or, as it is also called, the Christmas star. Eureka! Everything ingenious is simple! If only this flower was in the nearest store! To my relief, he was there. As you know, Poinsetia can be of different types and colors, but traditionally I chose red, and I took another cream color as a girlfriend. In general, I presented and everyone was satisfied!))

gririna, http://otzovik.com/review_4293924.html

In the store, the seller said that after flowering, the poinsettia dies, and around the literature says that the flower can be saved. I, too, did not believe the seller, after flowering I put the plant at partial shade, and replanted it in the spring, and as soon as I saw that it was alive, cut the shoots and began to take care of it as usual. And my poinsettia bloomed the next year, though the bloom is not as magnificent as in the store, and the leaves are not very large, but this is my small victory ..

Statiana, http://indasad.ru/forum/18-krasivotsvetuschie/200-puansettiya-kak-ukhazhivat-za-tsvetkom

We buy it once a year - at Christmas. then we throw it away because the leaves quickly fall off - and it is scientifically proven that at home an inexperienced person to support him until next year is impossible. the price of fertilizers will exceed the cost. it costs from $ 5, orgomny - up to 100 reach - but these are rare specimens. mass goods from 5 to 7; we live in the usa - here it’s like one-time toys. put in the room where you sleep - you can not. emits toxic substances. New Year's decorative.

A guest, http://www.woman.ru/home/Interior/thread/3868340/