So, as some of you know, I went on vacation last week. Normally while I’m away from home (most of the week) my grandmother takes care of my poinsettia for me. Since she was on vacation with me as well, we had to ask the person who took care of the dogs to also water my plant. While I specifically wrote down to only water it some, and only every couple days, I got home to an over-soaked plant who looked very sad, as the plant light had also burned out. 

Since we had gotten the first plant light, she had been steadily improving and becoming more healthy, but the initial light had burned out a while back and we had to replace it with a less efficient one. Couple the burning out of an already poor light source with copious amounts of water, and you get a few interesting results.

First thing that’s easily visible, one of her leaves is red. I don’t remember seeing a red leaf before vacation, and poinsettias on the off season are all green. They are the kind of plant that is supposedly very difficult to get to bloom again, and the only way to force bloom indoors is to limit the amount of light given each day. Plant light burns out - check. Not sure if this is what happened, or if I just missed it before leaving, but I’m pretty sure she had turned completely and solidly pretty dark green when we had the good plant lights. 

Second, I notice some white in her soil. Mold! Sophie has mold. I cleared out the fallen leaves and now have a problem to deal with. After researching some on the internet, I don’t think it should be too terribly difficult to remedy, but I can see very easily how it happened. Dark, wet soil, no one coming in and moving so the air around the plant is stale, pretty prime environment for mold growth.

We replaced the bulb in the plant light, though the type of bulb is the problem - it’s blue tinted so it “helps make plants look healthier and greener” - look, not actually be. So while it’s a good source of blue light rays, the plant also needs other rays. The sun into my room is poor because there are trees and bushes right out the window, and I often keep the curtain drawn. It is a thin curtain, so some light gets in, but not nearly enough for Sophie. My grandmother found another plan light, a fluorescent one, so for now I have both of them focused on Sophie from opposite sides of the room, and if she leans more towards one or the other I will just ditch the one she doesn’t like.

The problem of the stale air will be a slightly more difficult one. I don’t like being cold, so while I’m here I’m not going to want a fan on or anything like that. I am also likely to forget to turn one on when I leave. However - I will try!

The water in the plant will probably be the hardest thing for me to remedy. Since I’m not actually around often, I won’t be able to monitor her daily. When I leave today for work, I won’t be back in the area until Friday, and then I’m leaving the next morning for a few more days - this is my normal weekly schedule. What needs to be done is that I need to let her dry out just enough so that the top couple of inches has dried; then I can scoop out all the moldy soil, spritz the soil with vinegar, and replace the top couple inches with new soil. Hopefully my grandmother will be willing to help me out with this endeavor. 

The third problem that I have yet to acknowledge, is that there were definitely some sort of bugs in the soil. Looks like little centipedes. Help?!?!?