Poinsettia (poinsettia) or the most beautiful euphorbia blooms on the eve of the New Year or Christmas. Its small flowers are little decorative and almost invisible behind brightly colored red bracts, their location and shape resembling a star. For this plant it got its folk names: Christmas or Star of Bethlehem. Caring for poinsettia is simple, but has a number of features associated with the unusual life cycle of a flower.
Material Content:
Poinsettia Red Flower - nuances of growing
Plant vegetation consists of 3 phases: active growth, flowering and dormancy.
- Vegetation begins in April. During spring and summer, the plant actively builds up shoots and leaves.
- In September, the poinsetia is preparing for flowering, which begins at the end of December, January and lasts about 2 months.
- After flowering, the plant rests, for 1.5-2 months completely dropping the foliage.
In each of the phases, the plant needs some care.
Being a member of the Molochai family, the Christmas Star poinsettia contains poisonous milky juice, which can cause burns to the mucous membranes, poisoning and allergic reactions. For this reason, flower care work is carried out with gloves, and the plant itself is placed in places inaccessible to children and pets.
How to care for poinsettia at home?
Poinsetia Red is quite demanding and needs a certain light and temperature conditions, sensitive to the composition of the air.Caring for a flower will greatly simplify the creation of conditions favorable for its growth and development.
Lighting
During the period of active vegetation, the flower needs bright, but diffused light, so it is placed in the brightest place in the room. In winter, during flowering, organize additional illumination.
With insufficient lighting, flowering may not occur or its quality will suffer.
For a while, the plant is moved to a dark place.
Temperature mode
Poinsettia develops well at ordinary room temperatures (20 - 25 ° C). The flower does not like heat, cold (below 16 ° C) and sharp temperature drops.
Air humidity
One of the most significant conditions for plant maintenance is humid air, which does not always correspond to reality. The air of city apartments, especially in winter, is dry.
The owners of this plant will have to take all possible measures to moisturize it:
- placement next to the flower of an open vessel with water;
- installation of a pot on a pallet filled with wet expanded clay;
- the use of industrial air humidifiers;
- spraying moisture around the plant to prevent water from entering the leaves.
Poinsetia loves not only moist but also fresh air, therefore:
- in summer, the plant is taken out into the open air, placing in a place protected from direct sunlight;
- in winter, the room is often aired, avoiding the formation of drafts.
Watering
During shoot growth and flowering, the plant is watered frequently and abundantly, as the topsoil dries.
During the rest period they rarely moisturize, only when the earthen coma is completely dry, which happens about once a month.
The Christmas star does not tolerate both a lack of moisture and overflow.
Top dressing
Good development and regular flowering is impossible without fertilizer support. Top dressing begins in September. Once every 2 weeks, complex mineral fertilizers are applied for indoor plants. During flowering, supplements with a high content of phosphorus and potassium are preferred.
Pruning
To give the plant a decorative bushy shape, the shoots are regularly cut and pinched.
Pruning is carried out annually, after dropping leaves. The bare shoots are shortened by 1/3, weakened and deformed are removed.
Young growing branches pinch over 5 - 6 leaf. This enhances tillering.
To uniformly form the crown, the pot with poinsetia is periodically rotated around its axis.
Transfer
Every spring, after the growth of new shoots, a Christmas star is transplanted, changing the pot and the ground.
Pot selection
Poinsetia does not need too spacious containers. When choosing a pot, they are guided by the size of the ground part of the flower. The volume of the container should be 2 - 2.5 times less.
The ratio of width and height, as well as the material from which the pot is made, do not matter.
The soil
Poinsetia grows well on light drained soils. As a substrate for its cultivation, a soil mixture made up of 3 parts of turf, 2 parts of leafy soil, combined with equal parts of peat and sand, is suitable.
After adapting to new conditions, as the emergence of young shoots and leaves will testify, the flower is looked after as an adult plant. The exception is top dressing: it is carried out after 1 - 1.5 months.
Breeding
Poinsetia propagates by seed and vegetatively.
Obtaining seeds during artificial breeding, especially in varietal forms, is very difficult, therefore, at home, the flower is propagated only vegetatively, using cuttings.
Cuttings
This method of propagation is quite simple and consists in the preparation of planting material, the preparation of cuttings and their rooting.
Harvesting cuttings
Cuttings are harvested in spring or early summer. It is convenient to combine this process with the next pruning.
Young apical shoots from 7 to 15 cm long are cut from the plant so that each has at least 5 to 6 internodes. The slice is carried out under the node.
To stop the allocation of juice, cuttings are placed for 10-15 minutes in warm water, and then dried for 1 to 2 hours.
Juice released on a section of the mother plant is soaked with absorbent material and powdered with powdered activated carbon.
Before rooting, the lower cut of the handle is treated with any available root formation stimulator.
Rooting
Root growth is carried out in standing water at room temperature or in a substrate.
Most often they use a substrate made up of identical parts of peat and sand and placed in small containers with drain holes.
The stem is buried by 1 - 1.5 cm. With a greater depth, its lower part rots.
Rooting plants create greenhouse conditions by covering containers with transparent, airtight material and providing:
- heat: from 24 to 28 ° C, lowering the temperature below 20 ° is fatal;
- fresh air: spending daily airing;
- moisture: moisten the soil as it dries.
Subject to these conditions, roots will grow on the cuttings in 3 to 4 weeks. Rooted specimens are transplanted into individual pots by transshipment.
Diseases, pests and methods of dealing with them
Poinsetia leaves attract sucking insects: whitefly, thrips, spider mites and mealybugs.
With timely detection, getting rid of these pests is easy:
- the affected flower is isolated from other plants;
- the leaves on both sides are wiped with a soft material dipped in a solution of laundry or green soap;
- Having covered the soil with waterproof material, the flower is rinsed under a warm shower.
In case of waterlogging, the lower part of the shoots and roots may rot, causing “gray rot” to occur. The affected parts are removed by treating the plant with an antifungal drug.
How to make a flower bloom?
Not all poinsettia owners manage to achieve regular flowering plants. However, even in this case, not everything is lost - the flower can be made to bloom.
Under natural conditions, a signal to the beginning of flowering is a decrease in the length of daylight hours to 10 hours. This is because the lighting, even dimmed, delays the formation of flower buds.
For home growing, you need to simulate a natural reduction in the length of daylight hours. To do this, in the second half of September, in the evenings, the plant is covered with any opaque material or transferred to a dark place for at least 12 hours a day.
After about a month of such manipulations, the Christmas star will blossom.
Why does Poinsetia not blush, the leaves turn yellow and fall?
The plant declares its dissatisfaction with the conditions of detention or with care not only by refusing to bloom, but also by changing the color of the leaves and dropping them.
For example:
- during sharp fluctuations in temperature, in the cold (below 16 ° C), when exposed to draft or prolonged absence of watering during the growing season and flowering, the upper red leaves of poinsetia lose their color, turn yellow and fall off.
- If moisture gets on the leaf blades, dark spots appear.
- Too dry air will dry out and darken the edges of the leaf blades.
It is impossible to achieve a decorative look of a plant without care. A little attention and poinsettia every year, on Christmas Eve, will give its owners a bright, luxurious and long flowering.
