I have some prestige red that is short and I don't want to spray anything on them . My night temps are 66 68 and day about 76 79. I know 20-10-20 will make big floppy bracts but thats ok, well sell to churches and thats not a problem. We were hoping they would get taller the last few days. I am thinking of also rasing temps by about 4 degrees day and night.

The point manual says something about toxicity late in the crop and the type of nitrogen in 20-10-20.
I know you didn't want top spray anything but.... My 10" Early Prestige were well under the mark where they should have been, I sprayed them with Fascination (very well 3ppm) and picked a couple of inches within a week.

tnt, In my experience ammonia toxicity in the soil generally only happens under continous cold, cloudy weather. I use ammonium nitrate based fertilizers on my Poinsettia crop all the way until the end with no problems due to our generally mild Fall weather at my location. Your mileage may vary. ...Michael Pawelek

Michael,
I assume everything is in good color for you hence my question at what rate are you feeding now?
I have some small points that I lit for some extra growth I need to give them a good kick in the butt to gain some growth.

John C-

Your temps are about as warm as we would like to see without sacrificing quality. If the bracts are where you want them to be in terms of expansion, warming the temps anymore will result in floppy, faded bracts. Floppy may be OK for your customers but faded probably is not.

You are also at a point where we don't recommend upping your fertility rates as it's important to allow the EC levels to drop in the soil before sale. The retail and home environment is not a good place to send plants with high EC because generally consumers allow the plants to dry quite a bit more than they should and if the EC levels are high it will significantly decrease post harvest quality and life. If the plants are almost ready for sale their growth rate has also slowed and their fertility needs are much reduced. Increasing fertility and adding ammoniacal nitrogen will probably not give you the couple of inches you are looking for now that the plants are not actively growing.

tnt mentions Fascination. When the plants are mature and ready to go an application will probably result in more bract expansion and less in stem elongation. Fascination used for stem elongation is usually more effective if applied when color is first showing. It still may be worth trialing though. Labeled rates are 3-5 ppm and you would make the application targeted at the foliage. You should see results within 3-5 days. If you get the desired effect it would be worth applying to the whole crop because basically you are doing everything you can right now to encourage growth with your warm temperatures and positive DIF.

As a side note, if you didn’t use graphical tracking this year you should consider for next year to track the height of your crop throughout the season. Height tracking helps take the guess work out of height management decisions and it is much easier to correct height issues earlier. We are at a point now where there isn’t a lot you can do to correct the situation.