Hope you all have a very nice Christmas. Enjoy your family and forget about work at least for a couple of days.

Clem our count down clock is winding down, 5 more days till we start disposing of the devil plants.

John: you lucky dog, you! How did you manage to sell Dec. 26th as "Disposal Day"??? We’re stuck in our tracks until after New Year’s for the most part...and by then, there is hardly a poinsettia you’d want to look at, much less be associated with in any way.

To everyone who frequents this little corner of the CyberJungle, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and a very healthy, safe, prosperous and Happy New Year!

Clem
(a.k.a. "the Grinch who sold Christmas")

Clem,

Beleive it or not, got a phone call a week ago from one of our malls requesting the 26th. Got a new manager and he said it was time to move on. Our first installation for that particular account was the first week of Nov. So I guess they do want to move on. The rest of our points start coming down after the first.

Have a resteraunt that wants all of their holiday stuff removed December 30th.

Talk about moving on. I guess they will all want Easter the beginning of February.

John

You guys are lucky. One of my accounts wants the poinsettias to stay until it’s time to put the Easter lilies in. In 4 of the large planters at this account they have me leave them in until I re-plant them with the new poinsettias. I keep the plants and the color on them beautiful and full until I cut the blooms off and cut the plants back in May. I never completely get rid of them.
Hope everyone has a good holiday season. May the New Year bring us all tons of work.

Having spent 7 years at a florist that also had a plantscape division we find it easy to sell "celebrate every holiday, don’t bunch em together" and our price list says we don not water any points after the 24th of December. Have no problem selling new years as its own holiday! Got our bromeliads in on a truck today and what a celebration we had! Had a contest tossing left over points in the trash! Happy Holidays!
Lynn

This year I used Prestige Red points and I’m not sure if it was the grower or the cultivar itself but they are the best darn things I’ve ever had.....haven’t lost a leaf yet and the red is still quite intense. They’ve been in place since Dec 2 in a wide range of conditions. Also, the few that wilted once perked up again with no leaf loss. Any other cultivars people are happy with?

I was NOT happy with this years Jingle Bells ...... they did "ok", but were not nearly as full and pretty as last years.

If they did well last year, it’s not the cultivar, it was more than likely how they were grown. You also have to learn how to adjust your cultural practices to how the plants were grown. Sometimes the soil is packed in the pot fairly firmly, aiding in water retention, other times it’s nothing but a pot full of air, needing water every 3 days. Each grower has thier own "tricks" but these are all dependent on temperature and the amount of light the plants get. Also, heaven forbid a grower decides to experiment with a new cultivar and abandons all the tried and true ones. It’s taken 3 years now? to get those ’Candy Cane’ plants to a respectible size. A few weeks of cloudy weather at the wrong time does terrible things to a Poinsettia crop. Spindly growth, poor branching after pinching etc... I always inspect the local crops, we have 5 or so local growers and I start looking at the plants in early November. An afternoon spent touring the greenhouses can save weeks of headaches in dealing with poor plants. Always try and buy local, the more time they spend in shipping and transit, the more suseptible they are to decline. Mine are packed/shipped/unpacked within hours as they are grown no more than an hour out of the city. Every city has Poinsettia growers now. As well, paying that extra dollar or two a plant for something twice as full as a lower grade or fundraising quality plant is usually worth it.

We recently acquired a successful, operating greenhouse business at which the grower discovered in recent years that growing the larger sizes (7.5" and up) of poinsettias closely spaced during the early part of the production cycle produces a sturdy, upright-growing plant that needs less in the way of staking or support rings to finish as a great-looking plant with its blooms in a perfect dome over the top of the foliage (rather than the droopy, shrubby effect they get when spaced so far apart that the branches can spread more horizontally). This method works great for our purposes, where multiple plants are often bunched in containers to give larger displays in lobbies, etc. The blooms present across the tops of the plants in a solid blanket of red, and you don’t have to force them to fit together by burying the side branches and flowers against neighboring plants.

We had pretty good success maintaining the red monsters this year...no complaints to date, which is a new record! Of course, the best-looking blooms came to us from other growers for our wholesale distribution division in the past few days...HUGE bracts literally covering the entire plants. Too bad we can’t usually get these earlier on, when the Freedom variety reigns supreme, with its pathetically puckered bracts, small bloom size, and not-quite-Christmas-red hue in November.

Clem

I don’t even care to comment on those plants that only the devil could really admire... but I do want to wish everyone a happy holiday and best wishes for a healthy and successful 2006. Onward and upward.

My favorite cultivars in descending order of preference are:

1. Silk

My favorite poinsettia cultivars in descending order of preference are:

1. Silk
2. Fabric
3. Plastic
4. Kalanchoes
5. Christmas Cactus
6. Absolutely no flippin’ holiday flowers at all
7. Red poinsettias
8. Any other color but white
9. White (too darn fragile!)

This is my carefully studied opinion after two whole holiday seasons in the business so far. How’m I doing? :)

Sheila