Old Fashioned Poinsettias

I was reading a post that mentioned Poinsettias on Growing with Plants and the author said that a lot of plants sold today are treated with growth retardants and how it is hard to find tall, old-fashioned Poinsettias. Reminded me of the Poinsettias my family grew. We had a wholesale florist and did treat some plants, but the Poinsettias were not treated*. We grew huge Poinsettias, the parent plants were started in August and cuttings were taken off the parents to plant in various sizes of pots and plant configurations. There were single stemmed, multi-stemmed, and Poinsettia Trees. At a certain point we had to cover the plants at night so that they would be in color for Christmas.

Here are some tree Poinsettias in the background and 2 other sizes. We used drip irrigation after the plants reached a certain size and were spaced out. That was something I did a lot of at the farm, space out plants and set up drip irrigation. For some reason we always moved plants after they were watered. Heavy, wet and muddy, thanks Gramps.

 

This is a photo of greenhouse number 6, not very creative, but that's how we referenced them. It was the largest greenhouse and this is the view of the fan half. Just before Christmas the whole greenhouse would be filled with poinsettias on every bench and on plant stands on the benches.

 

This is a view of the other half of number 6. At this point in time we had motorized cloth pulling systems, the drums for the cables are visible in the top left quadrant of the photo. Prior to that, 2 people had to pull cloth over each and every bench at night and in the morning pull it back. When you were in a rush the cloth would usually get caught on something and tear and there would be cursing. I learned a lot working at the Farm, besides how to curse. I built some of the benches shown, every other bench was a rolling bench which increased the area available for growing plants by removing half of the aisles.

 

And here are the Poinsettias in bloom.

 

 

 

 

 

This is one pot. We had a customer that supplied Macys and other large department stores in NYC and we grew some special large Poinsettias for them.

 

Photos were taken in 1986 and 1987 by my father. The Farm was sold in 1992 to the City of New York and it is still in use, minus some of the greenhouses and outbuildings. The city grows native plants for use in parks and other natural areas.

* - Well most were not.