42 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY DECEMBER 21-27, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com FACE TO FACE There are certain signs announcing the coming holiday season—the smell of familiar spices, tree lightings, the advertisements that pop up, the jingles and television specials. But there is also a distinctive flower, and come November, Francisco Castaneda is surrounded by their colorful leaves. Salinas-based Growers Transplanting produces about 1.2 million poinsettias for its sister company, Rocket Farms, every year. This trove is distributed to markets in the West—primarily California, but also to customers in Nevada and Arizona. The company’s greenhouses present a joyous array of colors. Poinsettias come in creamy white, pink, orange or purple, as well as the more common gorgeous, vibrant red. This is Castaneda’s office. Poinsettia cultivation starts in July and is timed so they can hit the market the first week of November—a process that extends 17 to 18 months from a cutting to a full and colorful plant. But the timing is critical. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 95 percent of all poinsettias sold in the U.S. ship in November and December. The flowers are native to Mexico and most of the stems are imported from there. In Mexico, the plant is known as Noche Buena, or Flower of the Holy Night, because it resembles the star of Bethlehem. It was given the name poinsettia to honor Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. minister to Mexico and botany enthusiast who is credited with breeding the plant and introducing it to the United States—a story not as colorful as the leaves, known as bracts, themselves. Weekly: Poinsettias are a winter plant. Do they look the same yearround? Castaneda: The color that you see on the poinsettias is triggered by the length of the day. If you keep them for a full year, they will go green eventually. How many varieties are there? There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of varieties—probably thousands. In total, we use 10 different varieties in our program. Can you tell the difference? For the untrained eye, it is difficult. You can see ripples, also the shape of the leaf is different. That texture at the touch—some are thicker, some are thinner. The growing habit is different. Some tend to do more branching on the side, some are more conical in the way they grow. Which color is the most difficult to grow? On the spectrum of easiest to grow are red, and on the most difficult to maintain are the white ones. The white ones are very sensitive to moisture. They get stained very easily. They get botrytis [a fungus] easily. Are poinsettias in the wild the same as those grown commercially? Poinsettias are actually not like you see them here. We have been selecting them and breeding them to what they look like, but if you go and look in Mexico or somewhere in South America, they are actually more like a bush. They grow really tall. They don’t have branches—it’s only like one, tall stem all the way, and the bracts are really separated. A lot of people receive them as gifts this time of year, then try to care for them, which can be a challenge. Are they easy to grow? We grow vegetable transplants too. With a transplant, you want it to be visually appealing. But at the end of the day, you also want that plant to become a bigger plant, right? In the case of poinsettias, a totally different set of rules apply—because they need to look good, you have to be more careful with the things you use to grow them, because of stains [on] the flowers or the Bracts. What is the most common misconception about poinsettias? People think this is the flower [showing a colorful leaf, or bract]. The reality is that it’s not. The actual flower of the poinsettias is the cyathia [small yellow button] in the center. Most important question last: How do you keep a poinsettia healthy until the end of winter? You do want to check the cyathia, the actual flower, and you want it closed. You don’t want poinsettias in cold weather. Some people put them outside. They’re not going to last very long, because poinsettias don’t like anything below 55 degrees. Their perfect temperature’s around 65 degrees; that’s what they like. They don’t like moisture. If you really want them to last longer, put them in total darkness for a few hours. Poinsettias like short days. Flower Power Poinsettias are a classic Christmas plant, and Francisco Castaneda tends to a million of them. By Celia Jiménez Francisco Castaneda in a North Monterey County greenhouse full of red poinsettias. Growers Transplanting also grows vegetables, and starts its poinsettias in July to be ready for the Christmastime rush. They raise thousands of plants. DANIEL DREIFUSS MAKE A DONATION TODAY PROVIDING SOLUTIONS TO THE MOST PRESSING ISSUES IN MONTEREY COUNTY YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE YOUTH SUBSTANCE USE According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, by 12th grade, 46.6% of teens have tried illicit drugs.
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