How to Keep Your Indoor Plants Warm During Winter
It’s essential to keep your indoor plants nice and warm during winter. But even with central heat, this may be harder to achieve than you think. Here are six tips to help keep your plants cozy and warm all winter long.
Keeping your indoor plants warm throughout winter is crucial to their survival and happiness. However, it can be a bit of a challenge to keep your indoor plants warm during the cold winter months. Even with central heating, there are areas in your home that may become colder than your plants can tolerate.
To help you out, this article will not only explain why it is so crucial to keep your plants warm but also provide some tips to keep them cozy throughout the wintertime.
Many popular houseplants originally come from tropical or sub-tropical regions. This means that they thrive in warm, humid environments and rarely tolerate cold and dry conditions.
The ideal temperature for most indoor plants is around 60°F (16°C) or above. If you have central heat, then most areas of your home probably stay in that temperature range. However, there may be a few rooms and areas that often get colder than that throughout the winter.
If indoor plants are exposed to long periods of cold, they will stop growing and go dormant. While this is not generally a bad thing, it’s usually the first sign that your plants are too cold.
In more severe cases, the leaves on your plants will droop or change color. Many cacti species that are exposed to cold weather will turn brown rather than their normally vibrant green. In extremely cold conditions, your plants may begin to wilt and possibly die.
By now, it should be clear that keeping your plants warm is crucial to their health and longevity. Below are a few tips to keep your plants warm and happy during the cold winter months.
If you have one room in your home that has plenty of light, you can move all your indoor plants to that room and add a space heater to keep it continuously warm.
Make sure that the heater has an internal thermostat that can be programmed to a certain temperature. This helps keep your heating costs down because the heater will only come on when the temperature starts to fall below a certain level.
Ensure that you don’t place the plants too close to the heater, as this could also damage them. Don’t let the warm air blow directly on your plants as most indoor plants cannot either warm or cold draughts.
Glass windows can get pretty cold during the winter. This can greatly affect nearby plants, especially those placed on windowsills.
To protect your plants from this cold, consider installing a special window insulation kit. If you want to save money, you could place bubble wrap over the window panes.
Conversely, if temperatures are mild during the day but drop rapidly at night, ensure that you have window coverings such as curtains or blinds. Close them in the evening as soon as the temperature starts to drop.
If you have a spot in your home where you like to display all your plants, you could consider installing a heat lamp. There are many options available that work for a wide variety of plants.
If you can’t find the right one at your local garden center, look for them in a store that sells hydroponic supplies. Heat lamps are commonly used by people who grow vegetables hydroponically all year round.
The added benefit of using heat lamps is that they also provide extra light for your plants to stop them from getting too leggy as well. This is a great feature if your home gets very little light throughout the winter.
Heat mats are commonly used by propagators to help new plants grow roots more quickly by applying heat from below. However, these mats are also perfect for keeping your houseplants warm in winter.
All you need to do is purchase a heating mat that is large enough for all of your houseplants to sit on. Then, turn on the heat but make sure that it’s not too hot. If you’re going to do this, make sure that you keep your plants adequately watered as well as heating the soil will dry it out quicker.
You might also need to increase the humidity around your plants by using a humidifier, placing some bowls of water around your plants, or misting them regularly.
If the top of your refrigerator gets plenty of light, then this is the perfect spot for your plants during the winter because it tends to stay warm. Just be careful when watering your plants to ensure that the water does not overflow and damage the electrical circuits at the back of the refrigerator.
You can use the top of the freezer as well if you have one, as long as there’s plenty of light.
Believe it or not, putting a layer of bubble wrap around your pots will help to keep your plants much warmer during the coldest winter nights. The bubble wrap adds a layer of insulation around your pots and helps to keep the soil at a much more even temperature.
This is probably one of the cheapest ways to keep your plants that little bit warmer when the temperature starts to plummet. However, it will not work as well as a space heater or heat mat if your plants are placed in a very cold room.
Though keeping your plants warm may be a challenge each winter, the task will be significantly easier if you follow these tips. Even following just one of these suggestions is sure to help your plants stay toasty and warm during the long, cold winter months.