Ask Burton: Q: I’ve tried to keep poinsettias in the home for the Christmas season. Each time, I definitely fail. How do I keep poinsettias pretty for the holidays?

A: Poinsettias are not difficult to keep… if you maintain them properly. The maintenance isn’t hard, just particular.

• Keep poinsettias out of drafts. A beautiful poinsettia in the entry of your home is pretty, but cold weather gusting in every time the door opens is hard on these plants. Temperatures should be kept in the sixty-to-seventy-five-degree range whenever possible. Cold drafts will make your poinsettia unhappy. Sadly, this means that entry rooms or halls are usually not a good place to keep them.
• Do not overwater. Poinsettias need water but will quickly fall to pieces if kept wet constantly. The usual culprit are the pretty decorative sleeves that pretty much all nurseries sell poinsettias in – those foil caps won’t let excess water drain out. Cut an “X” in the bottom of such decorative sleeves, or take the poinsettia plant out of the decorative sleeve entirely and place it in a regular saucer that lets you see how much water the plant is actually sitting in.
• Bright, indirect light. Don’t place your poinsettia within three feet of a window if you can help it, unless you’re very certain your space doesn’t have a cool draft coming in around the window frame. But poinsettias DO need light to stay healthy! Shoot for six hours of indirect sunlight in a bright room if you can. Your plants will look better.

One last, important note about poinsettias.

Each year, we’re asked whether poinsettias are poisonous, by folks who are understandably worried about bringing a possibly dangerous plant into their home around kids and pets.

They are not a danger. Poinsettia leaves are not food. If eaten, they can cause nausea and serious stomach upset, and the sap can cause skin irritation. But they are not particularly dangerous, according to both the Poison Control center and in the case of your pets, the American Kennel Club. That being said, please keep kids and pets from chewing on your plants!