I don’t know about you, but I hate buying or being gifted live plants that are meant to be part of holiday decorations and then tossed out after a few weeks or months.
Around the holidays, poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) plants are all over the grocery stores and garden centers, with their bright red and green bracts just begging to be part of your holiday decor.
And then, when that colorful display comes to an end, the poor plants often end up in the trash.
I just can’t bring myself to ditch a perfectly healthy plant.
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If you feel the same, you’ve probably held onto your poinsettia long after the holidays have come and gone. And you might be wondering how you can encourage the plant to bloom again.
The good news is, it’s absolutely possible to set up the right conditions for these plants to be as colorful and beautiful as the day you bring them home.
It does take a bit of planning and work on your part, but it’s all worth it when you are enjoying the vibrant display.
If you need a refresher about how to grow poinsettia, read our guide.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of encouraging your poinsettia to rebloom from start to finish. Here’s what we’re going to go over:
Encourage Poinsettia to Rebloom
Before we get into the process, we need to get on the same page with our terminology, so let’s start there.
Poinsettia Basics
Before we can talk about bringing color back to our poinsettias, we need to discuss exactly what the colorful “blossoms” consist of.
The pretty red, pink, green, orange, cream, white or multi-colored “petals” that we call flowers are technically known as bracts. Bracts are actually modified leaves.
If you look closely at the center of the whorl of colorful bracts, you’ll see yellow and green bud-like parts.
Those are inflorescences enclosed by smaller bracts that are fused together to form a sort of cup-like shape. This is known as the involucre.
Now zoom in even more. Inside the involucre are a bunch of teeny, tiny flowers and glands that produce nectar that resemble a pair of tiny yellow lips. This structure of involucre, flowers, and glands make up what is known as the cyathia of the plant.
If you pull out your magnifying glass, you’ll see that the tiny flowers have all the usual flower parts, including pistils, if it’s female, or stamens, if it’s male, held on stalks called pedicels.
Usually, the male flowers form before the female flowers. This reduces the chance that the plant will pollinate itself. It promotes better genetic diversity if the plant is pollinated by a different specimen.
So when we talk about encouraging our poinsettia to bloom again, we’re actually talking about encouraging the plant to produce the colorful bracts.
That is, unless you want to propagate poinsettia from seed, since the flowers aren’t the showy part. Fortunately, the flowers and colorful bracts go hand in hand.
The reason the colorful bracts are there is to attract pollinators, in a similar way to the petals on a flower. After the plant is pollinated, the bracts drop and the cycle begins anew.
If you’re curious, other plants in the Euphorbiaceae family also have the same kind of flower structure. Look closely at any euphorbia and you’ll see the little cyathia, with or without the guiding bracts.
Now for a little shopping tip: once the plant is pollinated, the bracts aren’t needed any more and they will drop.
So be sure to look for a plant that doesn’t have a lot of yellow pollen at the center of the bracts, signaling that pollination has taken place. These will stay colorful longer.
So, what tells these plants it’s time to flower? Let’s talk about that next.
Timing
They say life is all about timing, right? That applies to encouraging your poinsettia to rebloom.
You need to plan ahead well in advance. If you decide in early December that you’d like some holiday color this year, you’re too late. You’ll have to buy new plants that are already blooming.
The time to start the work is in the spring after the plant has already flowered. It takes months of bright sunlight to signal to the plant that it’s time to start developing those colorful bracts and funky cyathia.
Poinsettias know that it’s time to bloom based on the number of daylight hours. A period of long days followed by a period of shorter days kicks the cycle into gear.
So when all danger of frost has passed in spring, it’s time to take your plant outside. It needs to be somewhere that it will receive direct sunlight all morning and afternoon.
It needs at least six hours of sunlight starting in the morning. Avoid the heat of late afternoons during the summer.
This light signals to the plant that the long days of summer have arrived.
But what if you don’t want to put your plant outside, can this be done indoors, too? Yes, but you’ll need to have a sunroom with glass walls as it’s likely your house doesn’t have enough light to signal to the plant it’s summertime.
If you have a light meter, you can check the how much light the plant is exposed to – you’re aiming for about 3,500 foot candles.
Alternatively you can use grow lights to artificially provide the sunshine.
You’re going to let it soak up all the sun until the fall, when you’ll bring it back indoors and set it up for winter blooming.
Preparation
When spring arrives and the nighttime lows are consistently above 45°F, it’s time to prepare your plant to move outside.
First things first, be sure to get rid of any colorful foil that covers the exterior of the pot, if you haven’t already.
Remove any faded bracts and leaves and then cut back the branches by about a third or up to half.
Make the cut with a clean pair of scissors or pruners and about an eighth of an inch away from a leaf joint.
Because the poinsettia has been exposed to consistent environmental conditions indoors, you need to introduce it gradually to its new outdoor home.
If you’ve ever hardened off seedlings that you started indoors in the winter, the process is the same.
Take the plant outside and set it in full sun for about an hour before taking it back inside. The next day, make it an hour and a half.
Keep adding a half hour each day until it can tolerate six or more hours of sun.
Summer Care
When the plant is situated in its outdoor home, it’s time to keep it happy in those conditions.
Keep an eye on the soil moisture, allowing the top inch of soil to dry out before adding more water.
Our guide to watering poinsettias can help you with the details.
Pinch back the developing stems to encourage bushier growth. To do this, look for the growing tip and cut just behind it at the first leaf joint.
You can do this with your fingernails or with a sharp, clean pair of scissors. You may wish to wear gloves when you’re making any cuts as although they aren’t poisonous, poinsettias contain sap that can be irritating to the skin.
You’ll want to pinch back the stems every month to ensure that the growth is nice and bushy.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a poinsettia in the wild, but they tend to grow leggy and gangly when left to their own devices.
Fertilize the plant once a month with a mild, balanced food.
You can choose to repot the plant before you bring it outside, but I like to wait until the fall. It doesn’t really matter either way.
Our guide to growing poinsettia outdoors has more information.
Fall Transition
Once the fall arrives, it’s time to shift to the next stage of our plan. I usually wait for the first day that the nighttime air temperatures drop below 45°F.
First, repot the plant into a slightly larger container, just one size up from the current pot is sufficient.
This means removing the plant from its existing container and gently brushing the potting medium away from the roots.
It’s always a good idea to remove the old potting soil and replace it with fresh medium rather than reusing it, because potting medium gradually loses its ability to hold nutrients and water, and becomes compacted.
Next, put a little fresh potting soil in the new container and lower the plant in.
It should be sitting at the same height it was in the previous container, so you might need to hold it in place and add some additional medium.
Fill in around the roots with more potting mix and water it well. If the medium settles, add a bit more water.
In the evening, take the poinsettia indoors and place it in a spot with no light. I mean none.
That might be a closet or windowless room in the basement, or you might need to set it under a cardboard box or storage container.
Whatever you do, leave the poinsettia in the dark for 14 hours overnight. Make sure if you’re using something to cover it that it doesn’t touch the leaves.
During the daytime, expose the plant to 10 hours of light. A mixture of direct and indirect light is fine, but it needs to be 10 hours.
Then, back into the dark for another 14 hours. Keep watering whenever the top inch of soil dries out.
Add a bit of fertilizer to the water once a month at half the strength you were giving before.
I keep my poinsettia in the closet in my guest room, and I take it out with my second cup of coffee in the morning and put it to bed when I feed the dogs. It’s kind of like having another pet.
You’ll notice that the bracts start to change color during this time and after about eight weeks, the bracts should be fully formed and you can move the poinsettia to its holiday location.
You need at least two months of this shorter day period, which might mean you won’t be able to put your Christmas flower out on display until the first part of December, depending on where you live.
If you want your poinsettia looking good by Thanksgiving, be sure to start the process by the beginning of October.
Don’t be alarmed if the bracts aren’t the same color as they were when you bought the poinsettia as some growers dye the bracts and others paint them or apply glitter.
Add Some Color to the Holidays
I helped my friend through the process of making her poinsettia rebloom one year, and she told me that next year, she would just buy another plant as it was too much bother.
I understand. They’re so cheap that it seems like a lot of work to go through just to have some color.
At the same time, doesn’t it feel good to know that you did it? And it can be hard to find really large poinsettias. Imagine how impressed everyone will be when they see yours.
Show us your poinsettia once you get it blooming again! And, of course, let us know in the comments if you run into any trouble.
I wish you all the best with your holiday display and I hope that this guide helped you on your way.
And if you’d like to learn more about how to grow poinsettias, check out these guides next:
