Holiday Houseplants: How to Care for Poinsettias, Christmas Cacti, and More

In this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, Master Gardener Jeanette Stehr-Green joins host Erin Hoover to explore the vibrant world of holiday houseplants. Jeannette covers popular holiday favorites like poinsettias, amaryllis, and Christmas cacti. She offers listeners tips for selecting healthy plants and bulbs as well as information about how to get them to bloom for multiple years. She covers the history of how poinsettias became holiday houseplants and tells listeners about some common issues to look out for with holiday houseplants and how to deal with any of those issues if they become a problem. Jeannette ends the episode by touching on some cultural traditions surrounding holiday houseplants and a list of lesser-known winter-blooming plants.

Jeanette joined the Clallam County Master Gardeners in 2003. She is a popular speaker and teacher, and a frequent contributor to local newspapers and radio shows. Jeanette has had a love affair with houseplants since going away to college and found comfort in the growing number of houseplants that crowded her dorm room. Jeanette has a particular passion for holiday gift plants.

When not chasing deer out of her garden, Jeanette and her husband enjoy hiking in Olympic National Park. Jeanette received the WSU Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024 with over 5000 hours of volunteer time.

• Amaryllis
• Greening Your Space: Caring For House Plants with Ann Amato – Episode 008
• Growing and caring for poinsettia
• Growing and caring for amaryllis
• Holiday cacti
  

[00:00:00] Erin Hoover: Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, your go-to podcast for up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden. Produced by Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteers and brought to you by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:00:16] I’m your host, Erin Hoover, a WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015 and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. WSU Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

[00:00:45] Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb episode 34.

About Our Guest

My guest today is Jeanette Stehr-Green. Jeanette joined Clallam County Master Gardeners in 2003. She is a popular speaker and teacher and a frequent contributor to local newspapers and radio shows. Jeanette has had a love affair with houseplants since going away to college and finding comfort in the growing number of houseplants that crowded her dorm room.

[00:01:09] Jeanette has a particular passion for holiday gift plants.

When not chasing deer out of her garden, Jeanette and her husband enjoy hiking in the Olympic National Park. Jeanette received the WSU presidential lifetime achievement award in 2024 with over 5,000 hours of volunteer time.

Thanks for joining me today, Jeanette.

Welcome to the show.

[00:01:28] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I’m delighted to be here.

[00:01:30] Erin Hoover: So why don’t you start off by telling us just a little bit about yourself and your favorite part about being a Master Gardener?

[00:01:35] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Okay, I have been a Master Gardener since 2003. I’m in Clallam County in the northwest portion of Washington State. My favorite part of Master Gardeners is learning.

[00:01:49] I just love to learn and I love to turn around and teach other people and the Master Gardener Program has given me endless opportunities to do that. I just think it is so fun to take a deep dive into a gardening question and figure out the why behind the problem. Then the where, how, and when to solve it is not a problem any longer.

[00:02:13] And I just love the learning.

What are Holiday Gift Plants?

[00:02:16] Erin Hoover: All right. Well, you’re here today to talk to us about winter-blooming houseplants also known as holiday gift plants. So let me start off by talking about what some of the more popular holiday plants are.

[00:02:28] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Well, I think probably the big three are the poinsettias, Christmas cactus, and amaryllis.

[00:02:36] Poinsettias by far out the, the purchases of those during the holiday season outnumber every other houseplant in the market. I’ve seen estimates like of all the houseplants sold throughout the year 85% of those are poinsettias.

So they’re very, very popular and a lot of folks who aren’t into gardening and aren’t into houseplants are very much into poinsettias.

[00:03:02] Well, it’s because they’re pretty.

Jeanette Stehr-Green: They are.

[00:03:04] Erin Hoover: And they’re seasonal. Most people throw them out at the end of the season.

[00:03:09] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I’m going to try to convince you not to do that.

Why do Holiday Houseplants Bloom in the Winter?

[00:03:12] Erin Hoover: Exactly. So why do these particular plants bloom more during the winter months as opposed to what we’re used to?

[00:03:19] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I love how you phrased that question.

So often I’m like, asked “How do you get them to bloom in the wintertime”, but it really starts with why do these bloom in the wintertime to begin with?

And, you know, I think probably the bottom line is that where they originate in the wild, the wintertime is a really safe time for them to be reproducing and they will be successful.

[00:03:47] They all come out of the tropical, subtropical areas that are going to be dealing with dry spells, lots of heat, competition for pollinators, that sort of thing, and in the wintertime, things get better.

Temperatures are a little bit more moderate, the rainy season returns, maybe the pollinators aren’t so busy pollinating other things, and so it’s actually a very good time for these plants to be reproducing.

[00:04:19] As a result, they’ve evolved over time to have these, triggers in those environments that signal to them it is time to reproduce. Those triggers tend to be the length of day, or more specifically, the length of night, the temperature, and the moisture in the environment.

Deciding What Holiday Houseplant to Buy

[00:04:39] Erin Hoover: How do you decide on what kind of, uh, a holiday houseplant you want to buy?

I’m sure it’s mostly personal preference, but…

[00:04:49] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Right, right. Actually, what I’d like to kind of rephrase that question is, once you’ve decided what kind you want to buy, because that’s so much personal preference, how can you be sure to get one that’s going to last during the whole holiday season? And to me, there’s like, two steps in that.

[00:05:07] The first is choosing a healthy one, and the second one is to give it the care it needs once you get it home. In choosing a healthy one, we have to think specifically about those three different kinds of holiday gift plants, poinsettias, Christmas cactus, and amaryllis.

What to Look for When Choosing a Poinsettia

To get a healthy poinsettia, it’s pretty much what you see is what you’re going to get.

[00:05:30] So you want to pick out one that looks really good right now. It shouldn’t be losing leaves and it should have nice foliage down to the soil line. It should, um, have its blossoms in full color, and they need to be fresh. Now, how do you know that a poinsettia blossom is fresh? Now, I know you probably know this, but maybe the listening audience doesn’t, and that’s the things we kind of consider as petals on a poinsettia are not really petals at all.

[00:06:04] Those brightly colored petal-like structures are actually modified leaves called bracts. The true flower is actually at the base of the bracts, in the center of the flower-like arrangement. They’re called cyathia, and they’re pretty small and you have to maybe put on your reading glasses to see them.

[00:06:25] But to get a good, fresh poinsettia. You have to look at those little true flowers. If they’re closed up and they’re still green or reddish and they look fresh, it’s probably going to be a flower that lasts a long time. If it’s already showing that it has pollen on it, it’s probably past its time, and that flower is not going to last too long, and it’s going to start losing those colorful bracts relatively quickly.

[00:06:55] So, poinsettias, you’re looking at the true flowers, you’re looking at the plant, and that’s what you want because that’s what you’re going to have.

What to Look for When Picking a Christmas Cactus

With Christmas cactuses, we kind of change gears a little bit. You actually want to look for a Christmas cactus that’s just starting to bud out. You want to get it home and then let those blossoms come open and then you can enjoy them for a longer period of time.

[00:07:22] One of the issues with Christmas cactuses is that they are very sensitive to wet soils. So one thing I’d recommend for everybody to do if they’re thinking about selecting a Christmas cactus is to look really closely at the soil line of that plant. Is, does it look overly wet, the soil? Is there moss or kind of a fungus growing?

[00:07:46] It could have been over-watered and it might not be a really good plant. In addition, if the plant itself has been in contact with too much wet soil, it actually gets a little discolored toward the base. It might be kind of a purplish off-color or a little bit yellow. And so get one that’s healthy green right down to the base of the plant.

[00:08:06] And again, look for one that has pretty small buds.

What to Look for When Picking an Amaryllis

The last one that I was talking about was amaryllis, and we typically purchase those as a bulb or a bulb kit. I’m seeing them more and more in nurseries and grocery stores as already planted and they’re blooming, but most of them are purchased as bulbs.

[00:08:27] You want to really look at the bulb before you purchase it. If it’s in a box set, go ahead and open up that box and take a look at it. The bigger the bulb, the better. You’re going to have more flowers and even more stalks of flowers with the bigger bulb, so always go for the biggest bulb you can get for your buck.

[00:08:46] Also look carefully at the bulb and make sure that it’s not been damaged in some way, it doesn’t have mold growing on it, or it’s discolored. With just a nice-looking healthy bulb, you’re bound to go right.

So that’s the first step is picking one that’s healthy. The second step with all of these plants is that once you get them home is to keep them looking healthy.

Caring for Your Holiday Houseplants

[00:09:08] And in general, with these flowering plants, you approach them a little bit differently than most other plants in your home, and it may seem a little counterintuitive, but it’s all to, all to preserve the flowers. You really don’t want to put any of these things into, into direct sunlight, rather you would like to put it in indirect bright light.

[00:09:32] You also would probably not want it to be exposed to temperature extremes, which is kind of hard in the household in the wintertime. You know, you have cold drafts coming in the wind, uh, in the windows or in the door as it opens and closes. You have the heat register, you have the fireplace, you have a lot of different things going on in the house.

[00:09:52] It’d be best to keep these plants away from temperature extremes. In addition, you might actually want to be on the little bit of a cool side. Most of these flowers will last longer in a slightly cooler environment. Not real cold, but probably around 60 degrees or so in your household. And finally, you don’t want to overwater them.

[00:10:16] All of them are sensitive to root rot. So, take a lot of care in, uh, checking their soil and seeing that it’s a little bit dry before you water it. And actually, I’m not going to say, I’m going to say one other thing, and that’s don’t fertilize these. When they’re in bloom, don’t fertilize any of these plants.

Common Holiday Houseplant Issues

[00:10:36] Erin Hoover: Okay, so what are some of the more common issues? You mentioned root rot, but other, maybe other issues that we might encounter with some of these plants?

[00:10:44] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Yeah, with, um, with poinsettias, the, the big issue is root rot. A lot of people overwater them and they will quickly succumb to too much water in the soil.

[00:10:57] Um, they also will suffer from leaf drop or petal drop as you want to say, and oftentimes that’s due to exposure to cold or overly warm temperatures or poor selection of the plant. If you haven’t gotten a fresh one, they’re going to lose their petals, and their bracts a lot sooner.

With Christmas cactus, an interesting thing I’ve heard a lot of people report is that the plant is just coming into bloom, it’s got these beautiful little buds on it, they’re excited, they move it so that it can be seen by the whole household, and within a day or two the buds drop off.

[00:11:36] That’s, it’s, it’s a little fussy that way. A Christmas cactus likes to be put where it is once it’s starting to bloom and just stay there. If you move it around and it has changes in light, or temperature, or ventilation, it more often than not will drop those little buds. So, with a Christmas cactus, when you get it into bloom, just leave it in a nice place, again, out of direct sunlight, and, and just leave it there.

[00:12:04] With amaryllis, one of the things that probably most gardeners have experienced is that they get top-heavy. If you’ve grown an amaryllis before, the blossoms are at the end of a long stalk, and once that stalk gets a foot or more in length, the whole pot can become very heavy and fall over. On more than one occasion in our household, in the middle of the night, you can hear a plop!

[00:12:31] Oh, and realize that that amaryllis that was in full bloom just fell over during the night. A way to prevent that is when the amaryllis is first growing before it’s in bloom, you actually do provide it a fair amount of light. It’ll keep the stalk shorter. Once it starts blooming and you move it out of light though, you do want to kind of turn it.

[00:12:54] It’s going to be getting light from one direction and you don’t want the stalk to bend one way or the other. In addition, um, many gardeners will stake it. They will put a stick and kind of tie the stalk of the plant to the stick. or rig up some other kind of support, some kind of trellis to prevent it from falling over.

[00:13:15] A really heavy pot is a really good thing with our amaryllis that will also help it keep it upright.

Tips for Getting Holiday Houseplants to Bloom at the Right Time

[00:13:22] Erin Hoover: Okay, so how can we avoid throwing out these plants at the end of the season and use them again the following year?

[00:13:29] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I think that all of these plants make good houseplants. I mean, when they’re in bloom, that’s pretty cool.

[00:13:35] Um, but they’re actually not bad looking just to have around your house. So, I certainly would encourage folks to hold on to them. Secondly, I mean, oftentimes, they will bloom without any intervention from the gardener. The issue is that they won’t bloom on our time frame, they’ll bloom whenever they want to.

[00:13:55] And so, left unattended, my amaryllises tend to bloom in March, my poinsettia blooms in January or February, and my Christmas cactus is in bloom right now. So, um, getting it to bloom when you want it to is, is the challenge.

What one needs to do though, if they’re really desiring to have it bloom in the holiday season, which is a lot of fun, is to think back about where these plants come from in the wild, and what are the cues that cause them to bloom in the wild.

[00:14:32] And then as the gardener, you have to provide those cues early enough to get it blooming within the holiday season, and that’s a little bit different for the the big three that I’ve been talking about.

You know, the poinsettia is very much a plant that it relies on length of night. It needs long nights to initiate the blooming process.

[00:14:56] By long nights, 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness. However, they can’t just be put in full-time darkness. They have to be brought out during the daytime because the bracts won’t color up unless they do get exposure to bright light. So, with a poinsettia, this process probably takes about 10 weeks of these long nights of 12 hours and bringing it in and out. So you’re probably starting toward the end of September, beginning of October, if you really want blossoms by Christmas time.

[00:15:23] A Christmas cactus is similarly affected by the length of day. However, it also uses cues of cooler temperatures. to trigger it to start blooming.

With a Christmas cactus, it also likes 12 hours of darkness every 24 hour period, but it only needs about six to eight weeks of those long nights before it starts initiating blossoms.

[00:15:57] Once you start to see the buds, you can bring it out of the nightly dark periods.

An amaryllis is a little bit different. It doesn’t rely on length of day or night, but rather it’s exposure to moisture, exposure to water. In the wild, these amaryllises grow in subtropical and tropical areas and typically have about nine months of rain followed by three months of drought.

[00:16:26] During those three months of drought, amaryllis in the wild will typically go dormant. They’ll just be in a rest period, they’ll die back, and then when the rains return in the fall, they’ll have this flush of growth and they’ll start blooming again, usually with that flush of growth. So, if you want your amaryllis to grow on schedule, you’ll actually need to give it that period of rest of dormancy.

[00:16:54] Sometimes, um, to make it actually bloom on, like, just putting it in a rest period, not watering it, giving it cooler temperatures isn’t quite, uh, aggressive enough. I’ve actually found with amaryllises that to get them to bloom when you want to, you have to cut them back, take them out of the soil, for about eight weeks, then replant them in good, well-draining soil and water them.

[00:17:25] The watering is what kind of initiates the process, but it really needs to go through that dormant period. And I’d say even with this aggressive approach to amaryllises, you’re probably successful in getting them to bloom during the Christmas season only about 50 percent of the time.

[00:17:45] Erin Hoover: So would you pull them out and plant them about eight weeks before you want them to bloom?

I mean, you want to do that, is it that tight of a window or more than that?

[00:17:54] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Yeah, actually, um, probably you need to give it six to eight weeks of a dormant period, and then another eight weeks to be in full bloom. Uh, sometimes they’ll move quickly into blossom, and other times it may be as much as eight weeks.

[00:18:11] So, typically, when Labor Day rolls around, I am starting this process with my amaryllises, but I have to be very honest. I used to do this religiously because I was just so excited about getting them to bloom for Christmas. And I realized with this really aggressive approach where you’re like taking it out of the pot, you’re cutting back the greenery.

[00:18:34] It was really, really hard on the bulbs. The bulbs, instead of getting bigger during the growing season, seem to be getting smaller year after year. And so, now, I’ve decided I’ll just be happy with whenever they bloom, and gosh, I’ve had one amaryllis that I haven’t cut back or unpotted for about ten years, and it rewards me every year with at least two different stalks of blossoms with maybe five to seven flowers on each of those stalks.

[00:19:05] So, that might be one that you just let it do its own thing.

[00:19:11] Erin Hoover: I have two amaryllis and I’ve just, I mean, I saved them after the first year, but I’ve never done anything with them except for water them. So they’re nice and green, but they haven’t bloomed again, probably because they haven’t gotten that dormant period.

[00:19:25] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Well, you know, I think that probably even more important is during the growing season, and this would be after they typically bloom, so it’d be January through, uh, most of the summer, is to give them the best care possible. I mean, these are bulbs, and they’re just like the other bulbs that you plant in your garden, that has to store lots of energy.

[00:19:50] So if during the growing season, your plant isn’t exposed to bright sunlight, and you’re fertilizing it, and you’re watering it judiciously, it probably won’t ever bloom. So, so if it hasn’t yet, uh, think about moving it into a bright sunny window and giving it a little more TLC.

How Poinsettias Became Holiday Houseplants

[00:20:10] Erin Hoover: Can you tell us a little bit about the, the history behind, uh, using these plants for the holidays and, and how that came to be?

[00:20:19] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I think probably the poinsettia is the most interesting story, so I’ll kind of focus on that one. Because it, it wasn’t like a slam dunk that these bloomed during the holiday season, and therefore we all started having them in our households. In the wild, a poinsettia is a really tall shrub, probably 10 feet or more in height.

[00:20:43] It has fairly small blossoms that are scattered across the canopy of the plant, and they’re probably not really conducive to having in a household in the wintertime, because they need, you know, warm temperatures. You can’t grow these outside and have them bloom. They were first introduced to the United States probably back in, I think, about, uh, 1828 or so.

[00:21:08] I know Joel Robert Poinsett, who was the, an ambassador to Mexico at the time, helped to bring those into the United States. They got a lot of attention from horticulturists, just in general; Not because they bloomed at Christmas, but people thought they were unique, they were special.

Within a year or two, they were showing up at flower shows and this sort of thing, and they were traded around by horticulturists and people who had greenhouses, but they weren’t making it into the general public.

[00:21:41] It really wasn’t until the 1900s that, um, and, and I’m going to give credit to one family, it’s the Ecke family, um, who immigrated to the United States from Germany. They kind of dabbled in various gardening activities, but they kind of took a liking to poinsettias, and they first started selling them on the street corner.

[00:22:07] They would cut them and sell the flowers in the holiday season. This family was extremely insightful because they kind of realized that this was a really good thing, a really good match with these red blossoms in the wintertime right around Christmas, but they weren’t catching on because you could just have these cut flowers. You didn’t have the plants.

[00:22:29] So they made an intensive effort to further develop the plants to become the potted plants that we now, you know, buy at grocery stores and nurseries and big box stores. Um, and, and it really, and it’s, a lot of research, not just by the Ecke family, but they were really at the leading edge of this.

[00:22:54] So much has been done to that plant to make it the potted plant that is, um, in our households today. To bring it down in size, to make it a more compact plant, to extend the life of the blossom, uh, to increase the variety of blossoms and to control the timing of the blossom, because even though they might have bloomed during the holiday season in their place of origin, they were a little bit late for the commercial markets in the northern United States.

[00:23:29] So they and other, um, horticulturists set about changing this plant. And it’s really a rags-to-riches story as far as I’m concerned.

Like all horticulturists, they initially started hybridizing where they would do crosses between different cultivars and that had desirable characteristics. They’d harvest the seeds and plant them, see where they went. That only went so far.

[00:23:54] They would then start cross hybridizing them with other, other species that are in the same genus as, as the poinsettia is to bring in other characteristics like they’ve been crossed with the dogwood poinsettia, which is a different species. They are a sterile offspring, but they have much more compact flowers and they have more branching.

[00:24:24] They have induced sports on the plants to kind of bring forward different colors and different textures of leaves and they do this by exposing the plants to x-rays and gamma rays and then taking those sports and vegetatively propagating them. The one that just knocked my socks off is that they realized that there was a certain line of plants that just naturally was more compact.

[00:24:55] It had more branching. It was shorter. It was just a beautiful, much better, um, kind of subject for being a houseplant. And so they would graft other varieties onto this, uh, rootstock and realize that these other varieties, when they were grafted on, would be compact too, and they, you know, like, this is just amazing.

[00:25:19] And for a long time, the Ecke family had the corner on this market because they had figured it out. Come to find out it’s actually an infectious process. It’s an organism that’s called phytoplasma. It’s bacteria-like, and it causes the plants to become multi-branched and have more flowers, and be more compact.

[00:25:43] And they were essentially spreading this infection by grafting one part of the infected plant onto an uninfected plant, leading to, again, a much more desirable compact plant.

It’s just kind of amazing the, the um, steps that they’ve gone through to, to create what we are able to get at grocery stores these days.

Cultural Traditions and Holiday Houseplants

[00:26:07] Erin Hoover: Wow. So, do you know of any specific cultural traditions that are centered around any of these plants?

[00:26:14] Jeanette Stehr-Green: To me, the interesting part about it is all of these are relatively recent introductions. You know, the Christmas tree has been around from the 1600s. Mistletoe has been around since the first century AD.

[00:26:27] But all of these really didn’t become part of the Christmas tradition until they were able to be hybridized and brought into a household, because they’re tropical and subtropical plants, we can’t be growing them outside at the wintertime, and so they had to be able to hybridize them and make them appropriate to be in a house.

Lesser-Known Holiday Houseplants

[00:26:50] Erin Hoover: So are there any lesser-known holiday house plants that we should try or be aware of?

[00:26:57] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Yeah, there are. Uh, I think one that we frequently see, um, is paperwhites. They’re a narcissist. They’re a bulb. Um, they’re, in my mind, the just-add-water plant.

[00:27:16] Essentially, uh, most gardeners will plant them in a tray with gravel and then they’ll just add water up to the base of the bulb and they will sprout roots, and they will grow tops and eventually, uh, develop very sweet smelling, maybe overpoweringly smelling, uh, flowers after a couple of weeks.

Um, cyclamens are another one. It’s, it’s kind of one of my favorites.

[00:27:46] And it, uh, kind of shows up in, in nurseries and grocery stores more around the, uh, January, February time period, but they also bloom in the wintertime.

[00:28:00] Then there’s the old standbys that are just, I consider them house plants, but they do bloom in the wintertime. And that’s like the Phalaenopsis orchid.

[00:28:08] That’s also called the moth orchid and African violets.

Final Thoughts About Holiday Gift Plants

[00:28:12] Erin Hoover: Is there anything else that you’d like to add about the holiday gift plants?

[00:28:16] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I think really the key to holiday gift plants is understanding where they originate in the wild. Number one, what kind of, you know, growth conditions are going to be there and that you have to replicate in your household for them to be happy and healthy.

[00:28:37] But then also becoming aware of what are the triggers to get them to bloom? And again, those are typically the length of the night, the temperature, or the reinstitution of watering. It, to me, it’s just really exciting that if you supply certain things, you can see it right before your eyes doing, uh, you know, responding to the cues that you’ve provided it.

[00:29:07] So, I think it’s really a fun thing for a gardener to try, even if they’re not so much into flowering houseplants.

[00:29:15] Erin Hoover: Well, I’m gonna move my amaryllis to the window and start watering them and see what happens. Maybe it’ll bloom in January.

[00:29:22] Jeanette Stehr-Green: I think the amaryllis is my favorite, uh, flowering houseplant. It’s just that there’s so much anticipation once you see the bud emerging from the, the top of the bulb and slowly but surely the stalk of the plant is getting higher and higher and just can’t wait for it to bloom.

[00:29:43] And there’s so many varieties of, uh, uh, available now. You know, there’s the, the most common red and white and striped ones, but there’s ones that are double petaled and ones that have spider-like petals, and it’s just amazing what’s out there.

[00:30:01] Erin Hoover: Yeah, I don’t even know what color one of mine is. The other one is, uh, it’s like a very pale pink with a darker, or peachy almost.

[00:30:09] Jeanette Stehr-Green: Oh, wow.

Erin Hoover: I know it was a gift that we received and when it showed up, we opened the box and the green leaves were already like, they were smashed up against the top of the box as it started growing. We didn’t know if it was going to be okay because it was growing without light more or less. So, we potted it up and it bloomed that first year, but that was like three years ago.

[00:30:31] Jeanette Stehr-Green: A lot of, of the amaryllis, are purchased in those kits, uh, which I think they’re, they’re very convenient because they’ll give you the pot, the soil, the bulb, and maybe some instructions.

Um, the problem is that oftentimes the soil isn’t really that good. It’s not that nutritious. And so, just getting a well-draining, um, nutritious soil, potting soil, is probably a better approach.

[00:31:01] In addition, the pots tend to be very lightweight, and plastic, and oftentimes don’t have holes in them. So, I often encourage friends, go ahead and buy the kits, but supply your own potting mix, supply your own pot, something that’s heavy with a drainage hole. Uh, you’ll probably be more successful that way.

[00:31:21] Erin Hoover: Well, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:31:23] Hopefully people will think twice before tossing out their holiday gift plants. Save them for next year.

Jeanette Stehr-Green: Yes, I think it’s worth a try.

Erin Hoover: Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, brought to you by the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program volunteers and sponsored by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:31:42] We hope that today’s discussion has inspired and equipped you with valuable insights to nurture your garden.

The Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State is a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to provide unifying support and advocacy for WSU Extension Master Gardener programs throughout Washington State.

[00:32:01] To support the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State, visit www.mastergardenerfoundation.org/donate.

Whether you’re an experienced Master Gardener or just starting out, the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is here to support you every step of the way. WSU Extension Master Gardeners empower and sustain diverse communities with relevant, unbiased, research-based horticulture education.

[00:32:27] Reach out to your local WSU Extension office to connect with master gardeners and tap into a wealth of resources that can help you achieve gardening success. To learn more about the program or how to become a Master Gardener, visit mastergardener.wsu.edu/get-involved.

If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to stay connected with us, be sure to subscribe to future episodes filled with expert tips, fascinating stories, and practical advice. Don’t forget to leave a review and share it with fellow gardeners to spread the joy of gardening.

Questions or comments to be addressed in future episodes can be sent to hello@theevergreenthumb. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and do not imply endorsement by Washington State University or the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.