Winter and Your Houseplants

In the blog “Winter Seedling Starting”, I had mentioned a winter activity for your green thumbs of “paying attention to indoor potted plants”, but I didn’t speak of what that activity could be. So let’s carry on. As you spend more hours indoors, you may see that your houseplants are dusty or untidy. You can ‘clean’ your plants with a few different methods:

• Put them in a sink or tub and shower them off. You can soak them thoroughly and let them drip dry.
• Use a handheld sprayer and mist the leaves. Use a towel to catch the dripping water.
• If you can hold the soil, you can tip the pot and wash them over a bucket or dip the leaves in the water.
• For plants with sturdy leaves you can wipe them with a soft damp cloth.
• For more delicate plants you can use a soft brush or feather duster.

You also can take the time to remove dead or yellowing leaves. You can gently pull off dead leaves by hand. If the leaf does not come off easily, you should use scissors or shears to cut them off near the stem of the leaf.
You might find yourself with time to re-pot your house plants. This is a fine activity but you will need to make the following consideration:
Winter is a time of shortened daylight hours and plants are sensitive to these ‘photoperiods’. Unless artificial (grow) lighting is provided, plants will have reduced photosynthesis. They will have reduced growth and generally look less vibrant or healthy. Take this into account by regulating your watering regimen, and resist the urge to water too much. Plants will take a couple weeks to recover from re-potting and during winter they may take a little longer. You can speed up the process of recovery with grow lights as mentioned previously.
So, enjoy the indoors and get those house plants looking great even before Spring gets here.