Winter Indoor Plant Care: 13 Essential Tips
Why do houseplants matter in winter? They bring life to our homes when the world outside slows down. How do we keep them flourishing? With thoughtful adjustments. What steps should we take? Here are 13 Winter Indoor Plant Care tips or practical tips to ensure your indoor jungle stays healthy all season long.
Why Winter Indoor Plant Care Matters
Adjusting to the Season
So it is getting to be winter here in the Epichouse plant jungle. And what I wanted to do was give a couple pointers to you as far as what you should do with all these plants when Winter comes and, season starts to slow down, how do we make sure that they’re nice, happy, and healthy? So I put together 13 different tips and considerations for you. I want to get through ’em really quickly so you can get to them in your house plant garden and really start to care for these bad boys. So let’s go ahead and get into it.
How to Care for Plants in Winter
Tip 1: Reduce Watering Frequency
Tip number one is watering. We can reduce our watering frequency in winter by about half, just because our plants aren’t growing as much. They’re going into a dormant phase which means they’re using less of more less all of the resources that they typically would need to grow. So if I’m watering this wandering Jew plant, the Tradescantia zebrina here, maybe once a week, I might ramp that down to twice a month instead.
Tip 2: Use Less Water
Tip number two is actually the amount of water we give a plant when we do water it. So in the winter, not only we’re watering less but we’re using less water when we water. So let’s say for example, this Peperomia needed around a cup of water, I might give it two thirds cup when I water it in the winter.
Tip 3: Water Temperature Matters
Tip number three is again a watering one. When we water, make sure you’re using water that is in that Goldilocks zone of just right, as far as temperature goes. The last thing you want to do is throw some cold water into the root zone. It’s just really not gonna appreciate that. That’s kind of a tip for gardening with house plants in general, but especially during the winter ‘cause you might leave some water out and then it might get quite cold and drafty and then you hit your plants roots with it and it just shocks the crap out of ‘em. You really don’t want to do that.
What Your Plants Need This Winter
Tip 4: Reposition for Light
Tip four, to remember that the direction of the sun or the path of the sun changes in the winter which changes the way that light spills into your rooms which means that you may have to reposition some of your plants come wintertime. I would very highly recommend shoving all of the plants that are light loving plants as close to the windows in your house as humanly possible to give them much natural light as you can possibly afford. And then the ones that can tolerate a little bit less light sacrifice those in a sense and move those a little bit further away. And it’s really kind of a nice time to reposition, redesign, get into aesthetic in the house line garden.
Tip 5: Rotate Your Plants
Tip number five is you may want to rotate your plants. You can see the Syngonium here has really made a break in this direction. And that’s because it’s on my plant stand over here pointing towards the sun which is right over here. So, I actually have already rotated this once. I’m gonna rotate it again. It’s a good time in winter to do this. Let all of your plants kind of even out if that’s the look you like. Personally, I do like that they kind of look even. So I’m gonna go ahead and put this one like this put it over here and now it’s gonna reach towards the sun this way and balance itself out.
Tip 6: Add Grow Lights
Tip number six is to consider supplemental grow lights. I’m standing right now underneath my Soltech solutions light which is one of the more aesthetic indoor grow light options especially for ornamentals because while the performance is good I would probably not use it to grow like edibles indoors like I would with some of the other LEDs I’ve reviewed on this channel but this is a beautiful one that you can go ahead and just add to your garden. In the winter our plants aren’t getting as much light. If you do feel like you wanna supplement, this is a really good one.
Tip 7 & 8: Skip Fertilizing and Repotting
Tips number seven and tip number eight, don’t worry about fertilizing too much, don’t worry about repotting too much. We don’t have to fertilize because we’re going into a dormancy season for almost all of our house plants. So they’re not really going to be needing nor using too much of that fertilizer if we were to add it. And it’s kind of the same idea with a repot. You’re not repotting in winter too often because they aren’t growing that much and they won’t really need to grow into that. I like to repot at the end of winter, as we move into spring and fertilize as we move into spring. But as we move into winter, we don’t have to do that.
Tip 9: Avoid Heat Vents
Tip nine, keep your plants away from any portable heaters or heating vents like that one right there. In the winter, especially in this house, it gets pretty dang cold. Sometimes I break and I have to run the heater. So I just make sure that none of my heat vents are blasting my plants as well as the ones on the ground just because that’s gonna drop the humidity, it’s gonna kind of dehydrate them. It’s just not a good environment for them to live in.
Tip 10: Watch for Drafts
On the flip side, tip 10 is to not keep them too close to a drafty window or an AC unit or anything that’s blowing cold air as well. It’s gonna kind of do the same thing just in a different way. For example, I’ve got my portable AC unit right here while I’m not running that in the winter, for sure, if this was to kind of slide open, there could be a nice draft coming in and just not really being too friendly to my plants. So just do a quick scan make sure that that’s not going on in your house plant jungle.
Tip 11: Boost Humidity
Tip number 11 is to consider getting a humidifier because in the winter we’re running our heaters, our air is drying out even further, the humidity is dropping and we’re growing a lot of tropical plants, which typically love humidity. And so you can just put a little water in the pot with some pebbles that doesn’t raise the humidity all that much. You probably should consider getting a humidifier. I’ll leave a link down below to the one that I like a lot. But, just a thought, can give your house plants a little bit of break from that dry, dry, dry air.
Tip 12: Check for Pests
Tip number 12 is to watch for pests in the winter. The dry air can actually cause a resurgence of spider mites ‘cause they typically like drier air, but also you’re just kind of watching your garden less, and so, you know, inspect the undersides of your leaves. Usually the Satin pothos doesn’t have any, but just as an example, you want to inspect, look in the nooks and crannies, make sure that a pest problem isn’t getting just out of control in the winter so that when spring comes your plants are really nice and healthy.
Tip 13: Prune with Purpose
And our final tip, tip 13, is to take a little time, whip out your pruning gears. I’ve got mine in my epic harvest apron. Link is in the description below if you like this apron. I think there’s only 100 of them being sold this holiday season. So definitely please go check that out. But yeah it’s a good time to come through with your pruning snips, cut off any dead material, do some pruning, collect it all, make sure there’s no disease material and just reshape your plants. You can even toss the clippings in a propagator if you want to, to get those ready for next spring.