Follow the useful tips below to prevent your poinsettia from dropping its leaves.
Poinsettia is one of the best-known end-of-the-year festive plants, for many it is a symbol of Christmas. There are many people who buy a pot or two every winter, but not a few get annoyed after a few days when the plant starts to drop its leaves. To avoid this, learn more about the needs of the plant!
When buying a poinsettia, make sure the one you choose is bushy, dense, vigorous, with healthy green leaves and colorful bracts. Curled or yellowing leaves may indicate root rot or dehydration. The plant should not be standing in stagnant water, this indicates that it was barely watered and it will soon start to drop its leaves.
Pay attention to the flowers, which are barely noticeable in the middle of the colorful bracts. On a fresh, healthy plant, most of the flowers are in buds, and the opened ones can be recognized by their yellowish-red color.
Poinsettia has robust growth. It prefers to be watered with hand-warm water. Water only when its soil dries out, but avoid stagnant water, it does not tolerate it at all. It also does not tolerate temperature changes well.
One of the most common mistakes you can make is when transporting the plant home: poinsettias cannot tolerate cold or drafts. On the way home, the plant should be covered or wrapped, and at home place its pot in a draft-free place. The plant should not be exposed to cold air coming in near a window, make sure to protect it from the cold outside. Before you open the window to air out the room, move the plant to a protected place! The plant responds to the cold with drooping leaves.
Place the poinsettia in a bright, warm room where the temperature is between 15 and 22 °C. The ideal place is one where it it is not exposed to warm air rising from a heater or direct sunlight.
The coloring of poinsettia, kept as a houseplant, does not happen by itself, for this requires the alternation of days and nights, which is imitated in nurseries with artificial lighting and shading. In order for the plant to be in its full glory again at Christmas, it needs to be covered for 12 hours a day for 6 weeks from the end of September, or alternatively it needs to be moved to a dark room for this time. This simple trick stimulates the coloring of the bracts and the growth of this popular holiday plant.
The color of the bracts can vary: in addition to the classic red, there are pink, salmon-colored, yellow and cream-white varieties. There are varieties with dwarf growth, and even ones with marble-patterned, spotted or wavy leaves.
