Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how to transplant a Poinsettia to your garden. Now, Poinsettia's are a beautiful plant. They have gorgeous red flowers and you get them at Christmas time. So the Poinsettia's are native to Mexico and even in the Christmas time in colder climates, if they below fifty-five degrees, they will die. They'll lose all their leaves. A lot of times they will come back but you never want to plant a Poinsettia outside if it's below fifty-five degrees in the day or the night because they will not survive. So if you live in a cold climate, don't even try it. But if you live in a warmer climate, you should plant them any time that you want. You can transplant 'em pretty much anytime of the year. The easiest time to transplant them is in the winter time because then they're the most dormant. In warm climates, they're still going to have leaves and flowers year round, but they still are probably the least active in the winter, and when you transplant 'em in the winter too, there's always a chance of more rain so they can stay wet enough and you can always prune 'em back about one third if you've got lanky branches and make sure and transplant 'em as soon as possible. You never want to leave the roots exposed and dry so you put 'em right into the ground. Make sure that the trunk isn't covered with dirt, and just covering up the roots and you're giving them plenty of sunlight. And you never want to take one from outside and put it right into direct hot sun outside. You want to give it a little bit of a break and gradually do that, so whether you take it from inside and put it in the shade first, and let it get used to even the sun of the shade, then maybe give it part sun so it's just getting a little son, and then gradually work it out into the full sun where you're going to leave it in that spot for a long period of time, and that way you won't shock it. But poi...Poinsettia's are pretty resilient as long as they don't get too cold. A lot of times they will get leaves again so even if they lose their leaves, you probably haven't lost the plant. And another rule of thumb is that in order to get a Poinsettia to bloom again, they need at least fourteen hours of darkness a day. So if you get one as a Christmas present and then it blooms and starts looking kind of lanky, so you turn around and plant it in the winter time outside and ignore it, it'll probably grow really well, but it might not bloom unless you actually try to trick it into blooming. And an easy way to do that is to just take a core, cardboard box or any type of box and cover it up for at least fourteen hours a day for about two months straight, just every night when you come home from work, cover it up and then take it back out in the morning when you leave, and then that way it'll trick it into blooming and then you'll get blooms on your Poinsettias and you can enjoy it outside just as much as you enjoyed it inside.
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