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How to choose a holiday poinsettia and keep it healthy

1. Poinsettias are now appearing in stores and you may be wondering if there is a strategy for selecting the best plants. Foliage should be dark green and bracts in vivid color, without any brown spots, burnt leaf margins, broken stems, or other blemishes. Bracts are the leaf-like appendages for which poinsettias are known and breeders have gone beyond themselves in concocting new colors and mixed-color schemes. Today, beyond the familiar red, poinsettia bracts may also be found in yellow, orange, salmon, blue, purple, white, pink, red with white speckles, white with a central blotch of pink, peppermint, white and blue, and so on. Before selecting a poinsettia, make sure that the cyathia or cluster of flower buds in the center of the bracts is closed. Soon after these buds open, they will shed pollen, a signal for leaves and bracts to drop from the plant. You can maintain your poinsettia as an indoor plant for years as long as you are diligent in its care. Keep your poinsettia next to a bright window, but away from the burning hot sun. As January begins, if not before, some of the colorful leaflike bracts will begin to fade and then fall off. Within three to 12 weeks, depending on the variety of poinsettia that you have, there will be nothing but leafless stems to look at. Cut the stems back to a height of six to eight inches. At this point, you will want to water sparingly, if at all, keeping the soil just moist enough so that the stems do not shrivel until leaves reappear around May 1. By the way, the stem pieces that are cut from the plant after leaves fall off can be rooted after dipping the stems’ bottom inch in root hormone and inserting them in a medium consisting of half construction-grade sand and half perlite or vermiculite.

2. After a rain, digging in the soil is not recommended since it can lead to soil compaction. Yet, if you just want to sprinkle small flower or vegetable seeds over the soil surface, you can do so just about any time, since no digging is required. Just make sure to cover the seeds with a thin layer of moist compost so they do not dry out, on the one hand, or wash away in a future downpour, on the other. By working lots of amendments or compost into the soil, especially if you stay in the top six inches and are just planting vegetables, you can plant annuals or herbaceous perennials from containers no larger than one-gallon size after a rain, since the compost will make the ground fluffy enough so that roots will not be stymied by compacted soil. The general recommendation is to incorporate eight cubic feet of amendment or compost per 100 square feet of planting area to a six-inch depth. Loren Zeldin, a gardening sage from Reseda, once advised me regarding care for succulents following rain. “After a rain,” he explained, “when the clouds clear and the air is still, frost damage to succulents is common. I always cover my succulents with a blanket when cold weather and clear skies are forecast following rain. With many gardeners turning to succulents as a water-saving measure, they need to be aware of the susceptibility of many succulent species to frost damage.”

3. Once deciduous shrubs and trees, as well as roses, have lost their leaves, they can be pruned. In the case of roses, which tend to keep foliage year around, it may be necessary to remove all leaves by hand to induce dormancy before proceeding with their annual pruning. On a shoot or small branch, a pruning cut should be made just above a node at a 45-degree angle. A node is the point where a leaf, bud, or side shoot attaches itself to the stem. A scar at the node marks the place where a leaf or bud was previously attached. Large branches on trees should be cut with the three-cut method. The first cut, an undercut, should be made from below, a foot or more away from the trunk. This undercut should go one-third of the way through. The second cut is made from above, an inch to the outside of the first cut. While making this second cut, the branch will break back to where the undercut was made without ripping off part of the trunk. The third cut, made from above or below — depending on the angle between trunk and branch — removes the remaining stub. Take care that this final cut is not made flush against the trunk. Some general guidelines for tree pruning include: Upright branches forming an angle of less than 30 degrees with the trunk are unstable and should be removed; no more than two branches should be allowed to grow from a single point on the trunk; horizontal branches, growing out at a 90-degree angle with the trunk, should be at least eight inches apart on the trunk so that if they are closer than this, one of them should be removed.

4. As temperatures dip in the approach to winter, it is comforting to have a tactile plant or two to cuddle on our forays into the garden. Most prominent among these is coastal woollybush (Adenanthos sericeus). This is a good-sized shrub at maturity with plumes of soft needle-like foliage. It is native to the coast of southwestern Australia and is therefore tolerant of salt and wind. Woollybush is slow growing but may eventually reach a height of 10 feet. One caveat is in order: As is the case with all other members of the Protea family of plants (Banksia, Grevillea, Hakea, Leucadendron, Leucospermum, Macadamia), phosphorus is deadly to woollybush. Therefore, make sure the fertilizer you apply to it is phosphorus-free. Probably the most famous furry plant is lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina). A member of the mint family from northwestern Asia, it is a ground cover that spreads in rich soil. It does best with less than all-day sun yet most often fails on account of overhead sprinkler irrigation since its furry leaves, when water lingers upon them, are highly susceptible to fungus. Either have it watered by a drip system or soak the root zone, around the base of the plant, carefully with a hose. You may not have to water it much, however, since its dense foliar hair restricts loss of water from the plant.

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5. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ronald Chong from Hacienda Heights who sent me photos of a squash I had never heard of before but am now eager to plant and think you might be, too. It’s called chayote (chai-OH-tay), is indigenous to Mexico and Central America, and was domesticated by the Aztecs. It’s a member of the squash family, which includes cucumbers and melons, and grows rapidly. Chong sent a photo of recently harvested fruit that came from an early spring planting. The fruit is pale yellowish green and has the look of a wrinkled, oversize pear.  The white chayote pulp has been said to taste like a cross between an apple and a cucumber and can be eaten either raw or cooked. Chong says that you can cut up the pieces and put them in your salad or microwave them prior to consumption. “The peel is tough and inedible when cooked,” Chong adds, “so peel the chayotes completely prior to cooking.” Although grown primarily for its fruit, its tubers are eaten like potatoes. Seeds, flowers, tendrils, leaves, and roots are edible as well. The fruit and leaves are highly nutritious and have multiple health benefits. An added bonus, in Chong’s words, is that “bugs don’t seem to like it.” Chayote (Sechium edule) grows in fast-draining soil and needs two good soakings per week in hot weather. It can trail along the ground or grow rapidly up to 40 feet as a vine. Growing the plant from seed is quite easy since you merely bury an entire fruit in the soil, as Chong did, and new plants sprout up obligingly from the seeds within. To find a grocery store near you that carries chayote, go to instacart.com, enter your address, and type “chayote squash” in the search box.

Please send questions, comments, and photos to [email protected] 

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