Keeping Poinsettia From Year To Year

To keep your poinsettia for next year you can do the following:
1. Remove foil so that the plant has good drainage. Keep it in a very bright window and water before the plant wilts, but don’t let it stay swampy wet.
2. In May transplant to a larger pot, put outside in morning sun and afternoon shade. The red color will have faded by that point and some of the leaves may have fallen off.
3. Fertilize regularly through the summer and don’t let the plant dry out.
4. In September bring it in again. In September provide a constant 14 hours of darkness out of each 24 hours to stimulate color on the bracts. That means no lights in a room, or light from a streetlight for 14 hours. If you don’t do this the plant may get a faint red color in January, but won’t be really red as it is now.
5. Poinsettias that have been kept as houseplants for awhile are “leaner and meaner” than the ones we buy at Christmas time; those are greenhouse plants raised in the idea environment of water, fertilizer, light etc so they are big and lush. Without a greenhouse it’s difficult to produce the same look again the following year, but they still make interesting indoor plants.