When the holiday season hits, grocery stores and nurseries stock their entrances with poinsettias, Christmas cacti and miniature Christmas trees wrapped in brightly-colored foil and adorned with ornaments.
Those plants, which will add some festive cheer as they decorate fireplaces and tablescapes, will most often end up in the trash as they decline. If you’re a holiday plant, that seems to be the circle of life.
But some plant experts say that doesn’t have to be the case — and that caring for holiday plants is not tremendously difficult.
“It’s something people assume is hard,” said Paige Santana, co-owner of the Your Plant Plug plant store at the Anaheim Indoor Marketplace. Santana said that while it’s not common for people to keep these types of plants after the holidays, it can be done.
Danae Horst, owner of Folia Collective in Eagle Rock and author of the “Book Houseplants for All,” also recommends keeping them.
“I just hate to see the waste this time of year of all of the plants ending up in the garbage,” Horst said. “There’s a carbon footprint, so to speak, to growing a plant, and if we’re just buying them to throw them away, that’s an unfortunate side effect.”
While each of the plants below has specific needs, all need good drainage. Those foil wrappers on the plants can prevent that.
“If you leave it in the decorative foil, just make sure when you water you actually take the nursery pot out, water, let it drain and then you can put it back into the decorative wrapper or decorative pot,” Horst said.
Here’s what experts said about five types of holiday plants:
1. Poinsettias: Horst said that poinsettias do best in bright filtered light and ideally should be placed in a south or west window that would allow for the intense afternoon sun to be filtered.
Horst said it’s best not to leave poinsettias outside if temperatures get below 50 degrees. Normal indoor temperatures should be fine.
They should be watered just when the surface of the soil starts to feel dry to the touch and it’s important not to let them get too dry, she said.
Horst said that as the plants start to receive continued sunlight, they will lose their red, white or pink coloration and start to turn green but there’s a process for getting them to change back.
Santana, of Your Plant Plug, recommends giving them about eight hours of light each day and then giving them uninterrupted darkness for the rest of the day. She recommends moving the poinsettia into a closet or similarly darkly lit place.
Horst recommends starting this process around September in order to have colorful foliage for the holidays.
2. Christmas cactus: Like the poinsettia, Christmas cacti require bright filtered light, Horst said. She recommends rewatering it when the top third of the soil they’re potted in is dry.
Like poinsettia, there are tricks to get the cacti to bloom. They need to be kept in darkness for at least 14 hours a day and in temperatures between 50-60 degrees.
If those conditions are still not resulting in blooming, Horst said, the plants can even be set outdoors in temperatures down to 45.
She recommends exposing the plants to lower light and temperatures about a month and a half prior to planned blooms.
3. Miniature Christmas trees: The miniature Christmas trees that fill plant stands can actually be any of a number of species. Buyers should check which variety they’re purchasing to understand what that variety’s specific needs are, Horst said.
Common varieties include Norfolk pines; cypress trees; and herbs such as rosemary or lavender cut to resemble a pine tree.
The herbs are best planted outdoors after the holiday season as they need a large amount of light and outdoor conditions are the most appropriate for their continued health.
Norfolk Island pine require bright light in order to survive but also high humidity, making them best suited for keeping indoors near a window.
Cypress trees are native to climates that are cooler but wet so they require consistent moisture and bright light. They can be either indoor or outdoor plants following the holidays, but they do require a lot of water, which means they’re not the best choice for a water-wise landscape, according to Horst.
4. Cyclamen: Andrea Kemp, a California-certified nursery person and one of the team members at Plant Depot in San Juan Capistrano, said that a landscape plant popular for the holidays is cyclamen. This bulb-like plant, which often comes in shades of red and white, prefers morning sun, afternoon shade and a medium amount of water (they don’t like getting too damp). Kemp says this plant is often pulled up as it loses its leaves around summer.
“If you leave them in the ground, oftentimes they’ll come back the following season,” Kemp said. “It’s never a guarantee, but it’s worth leaving them in the ground to give them that opportunity to come back rather than waste the plant and throw it away to bring something else that’s seasonal at that time.”
She recommends gardeners let the cyclamen die back on their own and plant the next season’s plants around them.
“Then hopefully, come wintertime, or Thanksgiving time, your cyclamen will leaf out again to replace the other seasonal colors that you used during the summertime,” she said.
5. Amaryllis and Paperwhites: These two bulbed plants are often sold in glass jars with water. Amaryllis tends to make larger red and white blooms while paperwhites make smaller clusters of white flowers.
Often if the plants are already blooming, there’s not much they need other than bright filtered light, Horst said. If they haven’t bloomed, they usually come with easy-growing instructions.
The plants can be rebloomed after their initial holiday run. Horst says they can be cut back all the way to the bulb and the bulb stored in a cool, dry, dark place for an eight-week dormancy.
When it’s time to rebloom the bulb, it should be taken out 6-8 weeks ahead of time, put back in the bright filtered light and given periodic water.
Horst encourages plant owners to give these plants a chance but says it’s OK if they die. If they do make it, though, that’s something special.
“You may be rewarded by getting something to bloom the following year,” Horst said. “And I find most people get really excited when something that hadn’t had blooms on it for most of the year starts blooming again. They really feel a sense of accomplishment.”
