Any day now, local greenhouses and grocery stores will be screaming “Christmas is coming,” with their stacks of mandarin orange crates and their resplendent poinsettia displays. Christmas songs about holly, ivy, and festive evergreen trees will be coaxing good cheer through mall sound systems everywhere. And folks will be stocking up on traditional holiday plants to decorate homes and dining tables.
Traditional Christmas plants differ from culture to culture. Folks in Oaxaca, Mexico, display large, carved radishes around Christmas. The Taiwanese love bulrushes, a symbol of prosperity. But around here, people generally stick to just a few plants that represent the holiday season.
Jim Hole of Hole’s Greenhouses figures over the Christmas period, he’ll bring in 10,000 poinsettias for the St. Albert and Edmonton market, 70 percent of them red, 20 white, and the other 10 percent various novelty colours, such as pink and even striped and speckled varieties. The poinsettia is the most popular potted plant in North America, he says, and the traditional red plant is what people associate with the season.
“Asked what colours they like, they may name an unconventional variety, but when they get to the till, what do they buy? Red.”
Besides new varieties, growers have brought earlier-flowering poinsettias on to the market “to extend the season,” Hole says.
“In the old days, I’d see colour (on the plant leaves) start around the end of November. Now I see it in October,” Hole says. He has seen pink poinsettias grow in popularity as the season approaches. “It’s kind of alluding to Christmas.”
To trigger blooming and colouration, the light poinsettias receive must be rationed for the few weeks after the autumn equinox.
“With poinsettias, it’s absolutely critical that they get the short days, or they just won’t bloom. A poinsettia will turn into an eight-foot tall shrub if you keep the days long,” Hole warns. On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of starving them of light once they’ve begun to bloom.
“People come in and say ‘I’ve heard you have to put poinsettias in the closet.’ No, if you do that, you’re going to kill them. They need short days to initiate the flowering, but during the daytime they want as much light as they can get. The light is food for the plant. All you want to ensure is that your days are bright and sunny but that your nights are longer than your days.”
The Christmas cactus, also known as the holiday cactus, is another short-day plant. Getting it to bloom around the holiday season requires a little bit of knowledge about what the plant likes. Like the poinsettia, the cactus wants minimal light six to eight weeks before Christmas Day. But it also prefers cool temperatures, so to get a holiday cactus to bloom in time for Christmas, keep it in a cool, dark place through October, but once the blooms appear, treat it like a poinsettia, giving it lots of indirect light during the day, and no light at night. Don’t water it during this period, either.
“If all else fails, if you’re not having success with the Christmas cactus, shorten the days, try cooling the night temperatures down a bit, and expose it to more light (during those short days),” Hole advises.
The plant is finicky, and there are plenty of websites that detail how to care for the hardy tropical cactus throughout the year.
Rutherford House on the University of Alberta campus has a Christmas cactus that traces its origins back to the original Rutherford family and their seasonal decorating more than a century ago.
The amaryllis is another holiday favourite because of its large, trumpet-like flowers. The amaryllis likes it warm, Hole says.
“The warmer it is, the quicker they come on.” But once it is in bloom, he suggests keeping the temperature in the 18-20C range.
Coleus, a foliage plant that can grow here in the summertime, has gained some traction as an accent plant.
“You’re not buying it for the flowers; you’re buying it for the foliage, and some have nice reds and whites and greens mixed in there, Hole says.
“We’re actually growing them to mix them in with poinsettias, and it has quite nice complementary colours. That’s kind of growing in popularity.”
Hole’s Greenhouses is running seminars on creating your own centrepieces. The last three run Nov. 19, 20 and Dec. 3, and require registering at http://www.holesonline.com/
