Dreary dark winter weather can be a death sentence for house plants. Pay attention to three key elements and you’ll keep your houseplants happy and heathy throughout the colder months.
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Maybe you’re like me and you had your houseplants outside for a vacation this summer. And they look great. Really great. And you brought them in the house this fall with fingers crossed, hoping they’ll stay looking awesome.
Or maybe you’ve wanted a houseplant or two, but every plant you’ve purchased meets an untimely death in short order.
I’ve been in both situations. In all honesty, it’s taken me years to take my own advice that I list here. I am super stubborn. I hope you’re more open to suggestion!
Light
All plants have a preferred light level. It’s usually listed on the tag. Anywhere from low to high light is typically listed. If there is no tag, ask me. Or ask Google. The answer is out there.
You can get fancy with light meters, but it’s really not necessary. Generally speaking, low light is any spot over about 8 feet away from a light source like a window. If you look at your shadow in low light it’s fuzzy. High light is within about 8 feet of a light source, and shadows in this light are crisp and sharp.
The biggest mistake I see people make, sometimes repeatedly, is putting plants in spaces with nowhere near the amount of light the plant needs. Start with evaluating how much natural light you have in your home. Honestly. Not what light you wish you had. (I may have been guilty of wishful thinking a time or two or ten here.)
Every plant needs some amount of light. While some plants can get by on much less light than others, every plant needs some amount of light each day. For most Northern hemisphere homes, a south-facing window is brightest over the winter. Next best would be a western exposure, followed by an eastern exposure. This will vary depending on whether you have trees or other structures shading your windows.
If you are new to houseplants or want to simplify having houseplants, stick with plants that thrive in your home’s natural light. It will save you a lot of frustration and money on plants.
Maximize the space near the good lighting you have by using plant shelves or hooks. Macramé plant hangers are popular again; so you can use this trend as an excuse for more plants! And if you’re even the slightest bit crafty, make a few for yourself– I put together some instructions and supply lists here.
It’s also possible to add supplemental plant lighting in situations where you just don’t have the natural light your plants need.
My favorite setup was always a basic fluorescent shop light fixture with two light bulbs. Use one “warm” light bulb (yellowish light) and one “cool” light bulb (bluish light). Typically the warm light bulbs are labeled “kitchen and bath” and will cost a bit more than “cool” light bulbs, which are usually called “general purpose” and the least expensive among fluorescent bulbs.
A more modern choice that is finally affordable are LED grow lights. The huge advantage is they do not burn out as quickly as fluorescent bulbs do, and they use way less energy. You can also purchase a wide variety of configurations. I have some that are squares that are perfect for lighting flats for seed starting, and a couple of gooseneck fixtures that are wonderful for houseplants. I’ve also seen round bulbs that screw into conventional fixtures, and long narrow flexible light strips and others that look much like a fluorescent fixture.
Any time you use supplemental lighting, adding a timer will make it so much easier– no need to remember to turn anything on or off! A good rule of thumb for most houseplants is 12-16 hours with lights on, and 8-12 hours off.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with different windows or supplemental lighting setups. I love orchids but had given up on them after I had to remove my lighted plant shelves to make way for my newborn son’s crib. When my son was about a year and a half old I bought a Phalaenopsis orchid just to see if I could grow it in my house without extra lighting. It survived on my kitchen counter for a while and did ok, but on a whim, I tried it in my west-facing bathroom window and it didn’t just survive, it thrived– a short time later, a flower spike appeared! If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to orchids, I wrote a series of posts sharing all my orchid-whispering secrets.
Pest Control
Even the best indoor environments will encounter pests sooner or later. Oftentimes we bring the pests into our homes as hitchhikers on new plants. Make a habit of carefully looking over plants before purchasing. Look under leaves, where leaves meet the stem, and in any little cracks and crevices. Take a hard pass on any plants that show signs of pest problems. Even if they’re free and you think you can get rid of the pests. I speak from experience on this!
As much as I love to cover every available space with plants, keep in mind that many houseplant pests have at least one life stage that is mobile– as in, it can spread to other plants. If your plants are close together or even touching, that makes it even easier for one plant with pest issues to rapidly become all your plants having pest issues.
Yellow sticky traps are yellow cards coated with a sticky substance that will catch any insects that are lured in by their yellow color (lots of insects love yellow). They’re not a trap. They’re more of an early warning system telling you a problem is on the horizon.
So what do you do if you spot pests? The least toxic approach is to handpick the offenders from your plants. But this gets old very quickly. And it’s not very effective. Plus most of us have other things we need to be doing.
My favorite, not too toxic way to deal with pests is insecticidal or horticultural soap. This is a liquid soap specifically formulated to penetrate insects’ bodies and kill them, but without harming the plant. You can buy the soap pre-mixed in a spray bottle, or as a concentrate that you mix with water in your own spray bottle.
Neem oil is another less toxic option if you can stand the smell. I don’t mind it, but it drives the rest of my family nuts. Maybe I should use it when I need some time to myself…..
There are home remedies out there that use dish soap in the same manner, but this is riskier, as the dish soap can be very harsh on plants and damage or kill parts of the plant, especially tender new growth.
There are insecticidal sprays that can be used on houseplants, but keep in mind that these are more toxic than horticultural soap. Also remember that by law, the label must say that the product can be used indoors on houseplants. These sprays may pose a risk to children and pets as well so proceed with caution.
Systemic insecticides, ones that are taken up and incorporated into the plant itself, are in my opinion, one of the last options you should try. Especially if you have kids or pets that have been known to chew on plants. But that being said, the dry granules have been a plant lifesaver, especially with heavy pest infestations.
Sometimes even with help from insecticides, the best choice is to get rid of the infested plant. I was always reluctant to do this until I had a mealybug infestation that wiped out my extensive orchid collection years ago. If I would have removed the first problem plant I might have saved the rest.
Watering
Houseplants, in general, grow very little, if at all over the winter. So they don’t need near as much water in the winter months as during the spring and summer. As a general rule of thumb, allow your houseplants to dry out between waterings during the winter. Don’t let them wilt, but do let the top inch or so of the planting mix dry before watering again. For some plants, like succulents, you may not need to water them more than every four to six weeks over the winter.
Every plant, and every human for that matter, will benefit from increased indoor humidity over the winter. One of the reasons I think my orchids do so well in our bathroom besides the lighting is the increased humidity. My Phalaenopsis orchids are from tropical, humid climates so they love a nice hot steamy shower almost as much as we do!
I used to use a small, “room size” humidifier like the one below when I had my plants basically all in one room B.C. (before children). Now we added the “whole house” humidifier that really does seem to help humans and plants alike. We use the large furniture-like unit shown below in our living room, but there are systems out there that work directly with your furnace as well.
When my cat was still with us I knew it was time to turn on the humidifier when I felt the snap of static electricity when I was petting her. Now that she has passed on, I’ve been using the state of our skin as an indicator. As our skin gets drier and itchier, I know it’s time to fire up the humidifier.
Fertilizing houseplants over the winter is not necessary. Since houseplants don’t grow much over the winter, fertilizing them will either be just a waste of good fertilizer or stimulate growth at a less than ideal time of year for growth. But if you have great lighting for your plants and you see some growth, it wouldn’t hurt to use a very dilute (like 1/4 strength) application of fertilizer, or some of the lighter strength houseplant spikes, especially as we get into the late winter/early spring months. What you want to avoid is pushing growth without appropriate lighting, because that will just result in very stretched out, leggy and weak growth.
Perfect conditions don’t substitute for available time
Even if you have the perfect lighting, pest control, and watering systems in place, the factor that determines your success with houseplants is ultimately time. Even the most forgiving of houseplants, like succulents, need care from time to time.
I have always been the person that wants to grow All. The. Plants. When I was a single grad student living in an apartment, everyone joked that they could pick out my balcony a mile away. Mine was the one covered in plants (of course!)
Flash forward a few years and a demanding job and spending time with my boyfriend (now husband) meant time for plants shrunk considerably. The love for plants was still there, but time was at a premium. I lost a few plants from sheer neglect.
Later still, parenthood was a shock to my plant-loving system. With my time absorbed by caring for a newborn and trying to take a shower occasionally, that first summer as a parent was every plant for itself at my house. When the dust settled sometime after my son was a year old, there were some plants that didn’t make it.
But I missed my plants. I love being surrounded by green growing plants, especially in the dead of winter. So I looked at what had survived that first year of parenthood– basically assorted succulents, a cast-iron plant, a ZZ plant, a peace lily, a philodendron, pothos and a couple of Ficus. All plants that have various adaptations to survive harsh natural environments. If I added more plants to the menagerie they needed half a chance at living, so I mostly stuck to what survived this crazy time in my life.
My son’s indoor fairy garden– an asparagus fern plus various “fairies” like a subway train and stone Triceratops.
You already know I didn’t totally stick to this list– I did figure out a way to grow orchids again. But besides finding a great spot for them where I didn’t need extra lighting, I also put them in a space where I see them multiple times a day. This helps A LOT with spotting problems early on. I also don’t have near as many orchids as I used to. I’m limited by the windowsill space– this keeps my plant hoarding in check, which also means I have time to properly care for the plants.
Ultimately, focusing on plants that could survive in my home’s natural light, and reducing their numbers so that I could keep up with their water needs and any sneaky pests put the joy back in my indoor gardening.
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[…] Both orchids are alive, but in the two months since I purchased them they’ve lost a couple of leaves apiece. I’m thinking I may move them to a warmer room in the house and add an LED grow light like one of the ones I mentioned in my post about Winter houseplant care. […]