Choose these flowering plants that bloom around Christmas
While Nero Wolfe considered it essential to ride to the top floor to tend his orchids for hours each day, I’ve found that in general it is much easier to kill a flower with kindness than with neglect.
That is especially true of the blooming plants that thrive around here in the winter. Seasonal favorites like poinsettias, Christmas cactus, pansies and calendula all flourish with minimal care.
Poinsettia plants are one of the favorite holiday flowers around. (And they aren’t even flowers, but very colorful leaves.) Red is the standard color, but they are also available in white, pink, yellow and multicolor. They are lovely plants, and for some (probably most) people it is best to treat them as you do cut flowers. Enjoy them while they are pretty then move them to the compost heap. The problem with keeping poinsettias from year to year is that they are forced to bloom in greenhouses to begin with. You have to keep working against their nature to make them keep blooming and bloom again.
To enjoy this year’s bloom, be sure to water regularly when the surface of the soil feels dry. If they are indoors, they should get as much light as possible and prefer a temperature of 75 degrees or slightly less. (Wouldn’t we all?) Keep them away from the drying breeze of the heater or air conditioner indoors.
Once the holidays are over, put your poinsettia into a spot where it won’t annoy you but where it will still get watered when the soil is dry. Outdoors is fine as long as the temperature doesn’t go below freezing. As spring approaches, increase your neglect of the plant. Reduce the amount of and frequency of water until the soil dries out between watering. Cut back the stems to about 4 inches. In mid-summer, repot, start watering and fertilizing. If it isn’t growing at that point, reconsider the compost option.
Color comes to poinsettias based on the length of daylight hours so it will need several weeks of darkness starting in October. Put it in a box or throw something over it to keep out the light. Put it in a closet you never open. Ignore it for about 10 weeks (around the end of November), then move back into a bright spot and hope for the best.
Although the poinsettia is the plant most closely associated with the holiday season, the Christmas cactus is a great plant that is becoming more widely given and enjoyed. The Christmas cactus is not a true cactus and is not as drought-tolerant as the name implies. However, it is a succulent plant and can store a reasonable quantity of water in the leaves.
This plant does not have the prickles that many cacti have. The Christmas cactus is leafless with flattened, scalloped, smooth green stems on spineless joints. The tubular, rose-like flowers have many petals and extend from the end of the stem segments.
Until this year, I have thought of Christmas cactus as I did poinsettia – lovely for a month, compost forever. Last Christmas, however, a friend gave me a blooming Christmas cactus and once it was done, I put the plant out on the porch under some other over-hanging plants and forgot about it. It is in its original little pot; it has not been fertilized; it has been watered only because the bigger plants dripped on it; and it is blooming like crazy!
Turns out that Christmas cactus likes to be potbound, doesn’t need much water or fertilizer and prefers filtered light. In short, it is happy to be ignored and will provide great joy when it reblooms. These plants also come in a variety of colors. Mine is white but there are pink, coral, rosy and shades in between. It makes a nice potted plant and a dandy hanging basket. If you bring it indoors, be sure to keep it away from the draft that will dry it out and makes the buds drop.
While not specifically holiday flowers, calendulas and pansies are standard winter blooms here in Central Texas. Both thrive in cool weather and both flourish with little or no attention.
Calendula plants produce daisy-like flowers in orange or yellow and bloom for a long season. Also known as pot marigold because they can be put into the kitchen “pot,” these flowers are favorites of herb-lovers. The petals are edible and are used in soups, stews, salads and other dishes. They are also used to make many medicinal concoctions. For many of us, though, their cheerful flowers are reason enough to add them to the winter garden.
The plants are happy to grow in containers or in the ground. They generally require no care except occasional watering if there is no rain. Pests don’t like them and pollinators do. If you grow them in your vegetable garden, the flowers encourage all kinds of beneficial insects to hang out in your garden.
You also can cut the cheerful flowers to bright up the house on gloomy, cloudy days. Keeping the flowers cut will encourage the plant to be more bushy and produce more flowers.
Pansies, the other most common winter bloomer, also will appreciate deadheading of faded flowers. These little work-horses of the garden will bloom from the onset of autumn until well into spring. Available in almost every color and color combination imaginable, they are happy, cheerful little faces to put in containers, along pathways or in flower beds.
Pansies need minimal care — a little fertilizer maybe once during mid-winter and water of course if it doesn’t ever rain, but generally they will take care of themselves. They like sunshine as long as it isn’t hot. They make sweet little bouquets to brighten your home or lapel.
When you choose your pansy plant, pick ones that are stocky and sturdy looking rather than long and leggy and choose those with buds rather than a bunch of open flowers. Transplant them right away and get them off to a good start by watering them in with a good organic liquid food. From then on, they’ll cheer you up with little effort on your part.