Poinsettias are quintessential holiday plants that are often bought as a timely gift or used to add some festive Christmas cheer to your home décor. Their stunning leaves sport a variety of colors ranging from creamy whites to vibrant pink and, of course, the iconic deep red, among many others. When it comes to poinsettias, a common misconception is that they don’t survive after Christmas, but we’re happy to debunk this myth!
Just like any other tropical plant, poinsettias can thrive long after Christmas if they’re given the proper care. Follow our handy after-Christmas poinsettia care guide to keep these stunning foliage plants looking their best into the new year.
What Type of Plant is a Poinsettia?
The scientific name for a poinsettia is Euphorbia pulcherrima, and it’s a subtropical shrub plant native to Mexico. Poinsettias are flowering plants, but the yellow flowers they produce are so tiny that they often get overlooked and are upstaged by the showy leaves, also known as “bracts,” that make them so popular.
Ironically, poinsettias do not tolerate the cold, and the only reason they’re in bloom around the holidays is because greenhouses force them indoors, like tulips and lilies around Easter.
How to Take Care of Poinsettias After Christmas
Like any other plant in your home, the trick to keeping it happy and healthy is providing it with enough sunlight, water, and the right temperature.
Light
Poinsettias need the right amount of diffused light to continue to thrive. Between six and eight hours of sunshine a day is ideal, so placing your poinsettia in a south or west-facing window after Christmas is the best place for it to get the proper care.
Water
If the soil feels dry to the touch, that’s a good indicator that it’s time to water your poinsettia. Your poinsettia will tell you if you’ve overwatered if it starts to wilt and drop its leaves. It’s always recommended to use a pot with drainage.
Temperature
As we’ve mentioned, poinsettias do not like to be cold. To keep your poinsettia happy long after Christmas, take care that your home remains at a temperature between 65 to 75 degrees. Your poinsettia will show it’s unhappy with the temperature if its leaves start to yellow and drop. Poinsettias will also benefit from humidity, so placing them on a pebble tray or running a humidifier nearby is a good idea.
Fertilizer
Similar to winter care for any other tropical houseplant, you don’t want to fertilize your poinsettia until the spring. Once you see new growth, you can use an all-purpose houseplant fertilizer regularly every couple of weeks.
Pruning
After Christmas, you may notice the foliage on your poinsettia begin to fade, even after all the special care you’ve given it! Don’t feel discouraged; this is a normal part of a poinsettia’s process and growth cycle. Simply prune away any faded foliage and continue caring for your plant as usual. If your plant becomes leggy by springtime, you can cut the stems back to 4 inches above the soil.
You may find that you need to prune again in summer and once more in the fall. To promote side branching on your poinsettia, trim off two to three inches of stem and leave three to four leaves on each shoot.
How to Make Your Poinsettia Re-Bloom
If you’ve made it this far with your poinsettia and kept it alive—congratulations! The next step is tricky—getting your poinsettia to bloom again. They need short day lengths, so you’ll need to keep your poinsettia in complete darkness for 12-14 hours a day. You’ll need to do this for an eight-to-ten-week period. An easy way to remember this would be from the start of October to about Thanksgiving! You should be able to stop putting your poinsettia in the dark after Thanksgiving, and with the proper care, you’ll have a beautiful blooming poinsettia again just in time for Christmas!
We hope that by following this step-by-step guideline, you’ll get to enjoy your poinsettia long after Christmas! If not, no worries, we will always have more next year! For more plant care tips and to shop our fabulous selection of houseplants, pop into our Plant Perfect garden center today.