Christmas blooms brighten sales.

• Author: Noyes, Leslie Barber
• Position: Lee Risse of Risse Greenhouse grows pointsettias

According to Lee Risse, proprietor of Risse Greenhouse near Fairbanks, an optimist is someone who tries growing poinsettias for profit in Alaska. Risse credits his sales of 1,500 poinsettia plants each Christmas season to his positive attitude. You also pray a lot that your furnace stays running,' he adds.

Risse, a big, friendly man in his 60s, started growing poinsettias in one of his commercial greenhouses off Chena Hot Springs Road 10 years ago. Native to Mexico and South America, poinsettias normally bloom best in tropical climates where darkness and daylight are about equal. A large portion of commercial poinsettias come from California growers, who capitalize on that area's even temperatures and consistent daylight to produce millions of low-cost poinsettias in huge, highly automated greenhouses.

Risse, who was looking for a way to make his family's 20-year-old bedding plant business pay more during Interior Alaska's cold, dark, winter months, recalls, 'I was talked into trying poinsettias by an Illinois seed company salesman." Risse started 1,700 California cuttings in one of his greenhouses in July 1980.

Wild poinsettias grow as high as small trees. But Risse wanted only centerpiece-size plants for the Christmas season. 'I had zero knowledge of how to grow these things,' he says. I figured I could get help from the university.'

The University of Alaska, though, wasn't prepared to offer wisdom on poinsettias. So Risse offered some plants for experiments to Donald Dinkel, a professor of plant physiology at the university experimental farm.

Don and I studied everything we could find on poinsettias," recalls Risse. When their plants began growing faster than the books said they should, Dinkel and Risse tried cooling the poinsettias to slow their growth. To their horror, the plants quit growing completely.

Risse and Dinkel hadn't factored in the impact of Alaska's midnight sun. Instead of the 12 hours of sun recommended by the experts, Risse's plants were getting 16 hours and thus growing too fast during summer. Then when Fairbanks slipped into winter darkness in October, the plants received far less than 12 hours. No light, no growth; worse, no red blooms.

The poinsettia's red "blooms" aren't true blossoms. They are actually leaves that have turned red. To do so, the leaves need even amounts of daylight, not to be had in Alaska.

To make up for lost daylight, Risse installed high-intensity sodium lights and moved them to compensate for...