A poinsettia isn't just another pretty face.
It's a hard worker and should be treated with the respect it deserves.Here's how:
Step 1. See the pretty poinsettia in the store. Pick a color. Red is still the most popular, but you can have pink, salmon, white, marble or yellow.
Step 2. Wrap it up. Poinsettias, given a choice, would be growing big enough to work as a hedge in some tropical paradise. They frown at our winters, so it's better to keep winter a secret from poinsettias. Ask for paper bags, and make sure the clerk puts your new friend into a bag big enough to cover the whole plant. Take her straight home.
Step 3. Rip off that colored foil around the pot. Poinsettias need light and air. They don't think twice about fainting dead away if they don't get what they need.
Step 4. Put the poinsettia in a southeast or southwest window that gets at least six hours of sunlight, says a spokesman for the Paul Ecke Ranch, one of the world's largest poinsettia growers. Keep the thermostat where it is. Poinsettias, you remember, come from the tropics, and they like 70-degree days, and nights that don't get any chillier than 65.
Step 5. Water your poinsettia when the top of the soil feels dry. Make sure some of the water drains out of the bottom of the pot into the saucer below. Throw away excess water.
Now, sit back and enjoy the brilliant color your poinsettia adds to your decor. Breathe in all that freshly laundered air. Freshly laundered air? Yep.
That's what poinsettias do for you. They clean the air. Specifically, they wipe out formaldehyde that you can't see or smell, but you certainly don't want. And you do have formaldehyde in your house.
Formaldehyde escapes from particleboard, plywood, foam insulation, grocery bags, room deodorizers, waxed paper, facial tissues, paper towels and permanent press fabrics.
Fight back with poinsettias -- lots of them.
NASA figured out that in a room with an eight-foot ceiling, it takes two or three plants per 100 square feet of floor space to clean the air. That comes out to a couple of poinsettias in an average bedroom.
Most of us don't have room for two more plants per room, but then we occasionally open doors and windows, letting in fresh air. Can't do that in a space shuttle.
After Christmas, you will want to tone down the Christmasy decor, and the poinsettias will fade in a month or so, anyway. Cut back the bracts, the branches holding up the colored leaves you thought were flowers, to about eight inches.
Feed your poinsettias with a liquid fertilizer such as Peter's 20-20-20 and watch it sprout. In no time, you'll have dark green, bushy house plants that will continue to work for you year-round.