Rockin' Around the Poinsettia

by Bee Mohn

Holiday poinsettia, cyclamen and Christmas cactus can last more than a season for those who enjoy the challenge of tinkering with plants. Here's how to buy them wisely and maintain them properly for year-round color.

"Hagerty the Florist" in historic Cranbury, New Jersey, specializes in the culture of seasonal plants. This family business began as a gas station and evolved to growing and selling 500,000 poinsettia a year.

Judson Hagerty, aka Grandpa, sold flowers and gas in 1932. The demand for his cut flowers grew and so did his business. His son Monty says, "He grew a few, then went into the wholesale business and it kept on going. The greenhouses erupted in the late '50s, but up till then he bought and sold cut flowers." Hagerty grew not just the usual, instead, he filled his fields with tulips, peonies, larkspur, liatris, gladiolus and daffodils. The tradition of the exceptional at Hagerty's continues to this day.

Monty got out of the service in 1958, went to college and began working the business, taking over in the early '70s. Judson's 88 acres of cut flowers became greenhouses, and the Hagertys wholesaled the half-million 2 ½-inch pots of poinsettia to the Mid-Atlantic region yearly. They grew Easter plants beyond the norm (and still do) - hydrangeas that looked like shrubs, every variety of narcissus and tulips that explode into giant cups of color. Summer brought the treasure hunter leftover flats of interestindg annuals grown for Rutgers' experimental gardens. Even Macy's scooped up Hagerty's bloomers for their annual flower show.

At Christmastime, wholesalers came from New York City with great trucks to haul away the Euphorbia gold. Lucky New Jerseyans were just a hop away to come see the greenhouses bathed in bright red and pink and to pick their special plant. Hagerty poinsettia standards were the standard. Their bushy floor plants had flowers cascading down the sides, not just on top.

But just as Hagerty the Florist evolved, so did the hybridization of poinsettia, which made growing them easy, from the old standby "Barbara Ecke Supreme" to Paul Mikklesen to Hagg and to more then the 20 varieties that Hagerty now grows. "Everybody including vegetable farmers started growing them, then the growing moved to Canada and then supermarkets started selling them," says Monty.

Today, the family business has scaled down and sells mostly retail. Present owner Dean Hagerty has stepped into his father's shoes. Now Monty rides a bicycle through the greenhouses when he's in a hurry and Grandpa, 90, hangs out in the store.

On the choosing of gift plants, Dean says, "Basically, if the plant looks good, it's usually healthy." He offers these tips for store-bought plants:

Poinsettia ~
When buying, look at the lower leaves. If there are none, that means the plant's been packed away or stacked too closely on a bench somewhere. Look for small yellow flowers in the center of the large colorful bracts. Make sure they haven't fallen off. Preferably buy the plants when the flowers are a tight ball of buds. The tighter the buds, the longer the bracts will last.

With proper watering and temperatures, poinsettia will continue to thrive. Let the plant go dry between watering. If it stays wet for too long, it'll wilt from loss of roots. Don't water on rainy days and don't mist. Poinsettia prefer low to normal household temperatures. They are subject to botrytis, a fungal disease, caused by a damp or wet environment, especially at night, so give them good, dry air circulation.

Hagerty shuts down the lights on the 10th of October, but Monty suggests that die-hard hobbyists do it a week earlier. "Follow the day length. When the sun goes down, the plant should be in the dark." In other words, the plant should be in the daylight and put away when the sun goes down. In mid-November, it can stay out.

Cyclamen~
When buying, look for buds under the leaves. If there are none, it most likely means the plant is bloomed out. If there are buds, with proper care they'll keep on coming for a while.

Keep these plants going in a sunny winter window that gets cool at night - 60 to 65 degrees. Keep them on the dry side and feed when flowering or growing. Dean recommends checking the plant in the morning and if it's dry, water it. Yellow leaves indicate either dry or wet soil, so feel the soil or use the weight test to make sure that it is really dry. When a cyclamen dries too much it wilts flat, and if you water it, it stays flat. So, he offers this trick of the trade: help the plant stand up again by tying the leaves straight up or by putting the plant in a paper sleeve. Water well and the plant will look brand new. Withering leaf and flower stems become slimy when they die, but not to worry, this is a characteristic of the plant.

Cylamen has a corm and should be treated as such, says Monty, although the plant is unpredictable. Let it dry back and the leaves dry up. It takes a year to bloom from corm stage.



Zygocactus - aka Christmas Cactus ~
Buy these plants in heavy bud.

Water the soil as soon as it gets dry in order to ensure that you don't lose the buds. The cooler they are kept, the longer they'll bloom. Got a closed-off chilly room to keep them in at night? Hagerty recommends an unheated protected porch. He grows these plants in an unheated greenhouse and says they can take it down to 40 degrees. In the fall, Zygocactus set buds at around 50 degrees.

Monty says, "TLC keeps these plants out of bloom."

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published December 01, 2003