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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Can I buy holly and ivy for Christmas?
A: You can buy ivy in a four-inch pot or as a hanging basket plant. Holly, you can usually buy two ways — freshly cut at a florist shop, and you just keep it in a vase with water. The other way is where sprigs have rooted into a pot of soil. Usually it doesn’t have berries on it, so you’ll see plastic or artificial berries wired to the sprigs to make it look more authentic. You can get variegated holly, which has a yellow tone to it or you can get the green holly.
Q: Can I regrow a stem broken off a Christmas cactus?
A: Absolutely. Make sure the stem has a clean cut right underneath a node, which is the round part on the bottom not the spiky top part.
Set it on the counter for around 24 hours then just stick it into the soil. It’s as easy as that. Keep the soil evenly moist and it will start to root.
If it’s a longer branch with multiple nodes, you can break the nodes
apart and do the same thing with each node, in multiple spots, so the pot looks fuller .
Q: How do I choose and care for a poinsettia?
A: The red part of a poinsettia is actually the leaves and the flower is the yellow centre of the stem that looks almost like little berries. When those open up, that’s when your plant is actually blooming.
Choose a nice healthy plant that is full right to the base so you know it’s been spaced properly when it’s been growing. A lot of them will have a ring around the edge of them just to hold up the weight of the plant because they’re in such a small pot.
Many poinsettia are sold in foil wrap that goes up and around the plant. Pull that back from the plant because poinsettia give off ethylene gas and if that gets trapped in the bottom of the plant the leaves are going to start dropping.
Poinsettia do not like to be cold, they are native to Mexico. They like to dry out slightly between waterings and then have thorough waterings in between. And they don’t like their feet to be wet so if they are sitting in a pot without a hole in it or in a foil sleeve, make sure you empty any excess water out.
When buying a poinsettia, take a bed sheet and wrap your plant in that before you take it out to the car. If they give you a plastic bag, wrap it in the bed sheet and then throw the plastic bag over top of it.
A lot of times you can’t even get the car pulled close enough to the store to be able to quickly put it in, and when it’s below -10 C just running it from the store to the car, you’re going to see damage on the plant.
Read more about year-round care for a poinsettia on the Dutch Growers website.
Q: How can I get rid of fungus gnats?
A: They live in damp places and soil. When you water plants inside they get damp and there’s nowhere else the bugs can go. Outside there’s lots of different places they can go so you don’t see them.
Put a little fan up in any seed starting or house plant area to get air movement. The bugs do not like that and the air movement is going to dry out the top section of soil where the larvae live as well.
If you have a really bad infestation, you have to deal with it in the adult stage and the larvae stage. For adults use sticky traps or suck them up as much as you can with a vacuum cleaner.
To deal with the soil, you can use nematodes in a shaker, or a pot popper and apply them onto the top of the soil and keep it moist. They are little bugs that eat the larvae and they’ll do their work for you. Fungus gnats have a 10-day life cycle.
You can also take a slice of an apple or potato and set it on top of the soil and leave it overnight. Remove it in the morning and you’ll see them on the bottom of the potato.
You can also use diatomaceous earth on the top of the soil which will do dry out any bugs coming out of the soil and help them from laying their eggs again.
Q: How do I make a Christmas cactus bloom?
A: Changing the temperature, changing the light cycle and even taking them out of the pot and transplanting them are going to force it to get some blossoms going.
If you haven’t done any pruning, taking the tips off will help promote new growth as well, and that’s where it will bloom too.
When you bring it back out into sunlight put it near a window that has like a slight draft but won’t freeze the plant. If the temperature gets to 3 or 4 C or lower close the window. It’s a desert plant and in the desert it gets cool in night
To know when to water it, want to stick your finger down into the soil about two inches and it should feel dry to the touch before watering. If there’s moisture in there, leave it alone. When it is in full bloom, you can water it a little bit more but when it’s still in the budding stage, watch that you’re not over-watering it.
If you have picked up a Christmas cactus from the store or the nursery, it sometimes has a decorative pot cover that doesn’t have any drainage so make sure to dump out any the excess water that has run through because otherwise you’re going to get root rot.
Christmas cactus leaves have a round part and then a jagged edge on the tip. If you break the tip off you can plant them in the soil and create little new plants.
Q: Can I keep a potted rosemary inside?
A: Use a grow light about 8 to 10 inches above top of the plant. Rosemary doesn’t like the cool so if it’s right next to a window it will start turning black and dropping its leaves.
Rosemary is a drought-tolerant plant, so don’t keep it moist all the time.
Prune it often and you can take the ends off of, dip them in rooting
hormone and put them into soil to make new plants.
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