I received this cream colored poinsettia for Christmas. It looks like there are 3 in 1 pot.
I don't know what to do. I figure it needs repotting & maybe pruning...?
Most of the leaves fell off by Christmas, but they seem to be coming back. We're a bit worried about leaving it inside because we have cats.
Zone 9A
I got this poinsettia about 4 years ago and it has the prettiest bright pink flowers, but it isn’t doing well. I live in Orange County, CA, zone 9 if that helps. Any tips on fertilizer, what kind, and when to do it? I neglected to water it for a little while this year. Should I transplant it, or wait until it perks up, fertilizer first?
Yes that's right, SEEDS. Some of you might not know this but poinsettias don't always grow as those small little houseplants everyone keeps during christmas, in their native habitat in central Mexico (which just so happens to be where I live) they instead grow as fairly big trees, measuring around 2 stories tall and they're generally 50% wider than they are tall. And it's because of this that I presume many people have planted them around my city since they do well and are easy to get, leading to there being a good amount of these mature form poinsettias around here. And seemingly, the presence of various poinsettia trees around here has led to at least one of them growing seed pods with viable seeds on them, which I harvested after noticing the tree the seeds were coming from and decided to grow them myself.
Now, the problem with this is that there is damn near no information about growing poinsettia from seeds, with some websites even stating misleading information such as saying you have to cold stratify the seeds for multiple months (which by the way, how does that even work? Poinsettia naturally live in semi-arid warm mountains where not once does it ever snow, poinsettias themselves are not frost hardy in the slightest dammit!) so I had to go off intuition and guess how they grow in their native climate (but to be honest I didn't have to do much guessing since I already live in it though). As such, all I did was stick the seeds about 2cm underneath a pot with very organic soil and tried to water only when the top half of the soil seemed completely dry, after that the seeds germinated fairly quickly, taking only 1 and a half weeks for the seedlings to pop out of the soil and 2 weeks for the seedling leaves/cotyledons to split open from the seed shell and begin to grow. Also, the cotyledons seem to be covered in what I believe to be the seeds endosperms after they rise from the ground, this approximately 2mm thick crust eventually thins away and becomes easily peelable and removable from the cotyledons (see pictures 8-9) which allows the cotyledons to fully expand and grow along with the seedling.
I am particularly eager to share the last part related to the cotyledons, because even though there's a few articles on the internet talking about how to germinate the seeds there are none and I really do mean NONE that go in depth about the appearance of the seedlings and cotyledons or show pictures of them, or atleast none that I could easily find. So pretty much, you're looking at the only pictures of poinsettia seedlings on the internet =b.
I find it really strange that such a well known and iconic plant as the poinsettia, being found on every corner of the globe and all, has such a poorly documented registry on its seeds and seedlings, most likely because you can only harvest seeds from the old and tall arborescent forms of the plant which is a luxury not everyone seems to have. But I'm here to make that change, at least a little bit. I will keep everyone updated with how the seedlings grow over the months, hopefully my post reaches people who are just as interested in growing these things from seeds as I am
I'm very new to growing Poinsettia plants. This is my first one, and much to my surprise, had really nice success last year.
Roughly 6 weeks ago (end of March) I pruned this poinsettia for this new season. It was getting pretty large, and I needed to add more soil, so on the advice of a few and based on some reading, I pruned each branch back and left a few inches of green wood. At the same time, I re-potted it with some fresh soil, and put a layer of sand on top (to help with fungus gnats).
Since then, it has basically only produced these small leaves, and nearly all are red. It also looks like it is blooming / producing flowers again. It isn't really producing any new branches at all.
Any idea what is going on? What should I do to help the little guy?
Couple notes. This is a southern facing window that gets a good amount of sunlight. I exclusively bottom water. The new potting soil had a small amount of fertilizer mixed in (it was a standard bag of potting soil mix). There's also a layer of diatomaceous earth on top of the sand (I was really having an issue with fungus gnats a few weeks ago).
Pictures to show current state, what it looked like when I first pruned and re-potted, and what it looked like before pruning.
Thanks in advance for any advice!