Poinsettias

When Wimberley suffers three-digit temperatures, little rainfall, and deer foraging for vegetation like this past summer, we don’t typically think of poinsettias. Imagine how dumbfounded I was in mid-July to have poinsettias flourishing in watered pots in my yard. Cacti, yuccas and sotols, yes, but poinsettias?

Poinsettias are native to Mexico and are found in the hot, seasonally dry forests of the Mexican interior. In our long day summers the poinsettias are lush green. The coloring we associate with the red Christmas plant are a grouping of leaves that turn colors when provided daily with equal (or less) amounts of light than dark. So don’t expect a flaming red or snowwhite poinsettia until the right conditions are met in the fall.

I repotted my Christmas poinsettias in mid-January and I kept them indoors away from the cold weather. By March, they were leggy, droopy and just plain ugly. Pretty disgusted, I considered chucking them, but that’s not what a good gardener does. I pruned them back to about half their size, re-potted again by putting two or three little poinsettias in one bigger pot to make them look fuller and more robust. I fertilized them and set them outside and hoped for the best. Initially there was little rainfall so I started putting them under the air-conditioning drip. There was another bonus: the deer never touched the poinsettias nor my beloved grandmother’s wash pot of Autumn Joy sedum which the poinsettias surrounded. The sedum has been grazed by deer many times in the past to recover and be eaten time and again; this was the first summer that it flourished without their interference.

When the holiday season ends, and you look forlornly at a once striking poinsettia, set it in a frostfree location and consider bringing it back to life for a summer of gardener’s delight. You’ll be glad you did!

Written by Lucille (Ceale) Kirkham