5 Tips to Keep your Houseplants Happy and Healthy During Winter

If you are anything like me when winter is at its peak, your looking for ways to get your hands dirty and have some greenery around.  Houseplants are a great way to fill the gardening void but can sometimes prove to be a challenge at keeping happy and healthy during the long cold winter months.  The air is drier, there's less light, and some houseplants can just be miserable and even die  because of it.  If your house is anything like ours and heated with wood heat is can be a challenge getting the right temperatures and humidity levels that a lot of houseplants thrive on and also poses some other challenges as well.  Here are a few tips I've learned over the years to help keep those houseplants, and you, happy and healthy throughout the winter.

1.  Make sure there's an adequate humidity level-  The dry air in winter can really cause havoc to a lot of your houseplants.  Most tropical plants need the humidity levels to be around 70% and the majority of the houseplants are of the tropical variety, with the exception of succulents and cacti which do just fine in dry climates.  You can add moisture through the air by running humidifiers, simmering water on your wood stove, and by making sure that it doesn't get too hot in your home by trying to regulate your heat source, which is not the easiest thing to do with wood heat but worth an attempt. Also letting your house get a few degrees cooler at night will really benefit your houseplants as well when transpiration rates would naturally slowdown.

2.  Increase watering-  With winter drying everything out and the artificial heat, it is really important to keep an eye on the soil moisture level of your houseplants as well.  I tend to increase my watering of my tropical houseplants from once a week in the summer months to twice a week during the winter.  When temperatures are high and there is low humidity plants transpire at a much higher rate and therefor the require much more water to continue to stay healthy in that environment. Just go around and stick your finger in the soil to see weather or not they need an extra drink, if it still feels moist skip it.

3.  Dust your Houseplants-  Wood heat, along with other heat sources, can really cause an abundance of dust floating around and it tends to accumulate on the leaves of your houseplants essentially strangling them.  Plants breath through the stomata in their leaves and stems and when a thick layer of dust is blocking them from opening and making gas and moisture transfers the plants really begin to suffer.  Houseplants aren't exposed to rain like they are in nature to remove the buildup so it is our job to keep them clean.  I really like being hands on with my plants so I usually will wet down a rag with water and hand wipe the leaves and steams to clean off the dust, dirt and cobweb buildup, but you could easily put them in your sink or shower and spray them down as well. Although something seems so impersonal about it and you can't guaranty that you've gotten it all off that way either, just my opinion, many people use this method to save time and energy. I suggest doing this at least twice a year if not more.

4.  Spray down houseplants to remove salt build up-  hosing out the soil near the end of winter is also a great thing to do to keep your houseplants in optimal health.  Many of us have treated water in one sense or another, like water softeners, or chlorine treated tap water and the salts from these treatments tend to build up in the soil over time causing toxicity, so it is imperative to really hose out any of the buildup in the soil.  In the summer months I water our house plants with collected rain water from our rain barrels but have to water the houseplants with our treated well water in the winter, so usually sometime in March I take our 30 something houseplants into the shower one by one and give them a thorough soaking and let them sit in there to drain before putting them back to their respected homes.  Sometimes I even wait till spring to do this so that I can use the rain water but really as long as you're really rinsing out the buildup it shouldn't make a difference. If you always use treated water on your houseplants you may want to consider doing this twice a year.

5.  Add lighting if needed-  The shorter days of winter can make some of your more high light house plants unhappy and they may benefit from some artificial lighting to supplement, especially in the really dark months of winter.  I know the houseplants that we have on our balcony by our staircase just doesn't get as much sunlight as in the summer months and our plants tend to suffer there because of it, so we have gotten a couple plant lights to shine on them during those times.  Or if you know that about a certain spot you may want to consider moving higher light plants closer to a window during the winter months or choose plants that can handle low light locations for those spots that get darker in the winter months.

There you have it, with these few tips you should have all the tools you need to keep your houseplants happy, healthy and radiant even in the long months of winter, while also curing your gardening itch until spring comes around.  If you have any comments or tips to add feel free to add them, we'd all appreciate it. Thanks!

~Megan~