Simply Put: Parents, It’s Autumn. Do You Know Where Your Houseplants Are?

Those cool autumn nights are upon us, and if you have some of your houseplants outdoors, it’s time to think about bringing them back indoors for the winter. That is, assuming you want to save them. The other option is to leave them outdoors and say “oops” after the first frost and your houseplants take The Big Sleep.

Let There Be Light: Let’s assume that you do want to bring your plants in. In the great outdoors they have been getting a lot more light than they are likely to get in the house. Remember that plants “eat” sun light, it’s where their energy comes from. They respond to higher light conditions both by making more leaves, and also making leaves that are better able to survive in high light conditions. When you bring your houseplant indoors, back into lower light levels, it’s like putting yourself on a bread and water diet after two weeks at the all-U-can-eat dessert buffet on a cruise ship. It’s a starvation diet, and something has to give.

What happens is, the plant withdraws some of the stored foods (starches and sugars) from its older leaves, and the leaves yellow and fall off. It may grow some new leaves at the same time, leaves that are more effective at catching energy in a low light environment. The leaf stems may even bend over time so that the leaves are held pointing down instead of horizontally, so that they are more able to absorb light coming in from the side (windows) than overhead (sun).

To minimize this light shock, begin by moving the plant into a shadier area outdoors for the next few days. It’s still brighter than indoors, but it will help the plant begin the adjustment to inside. When you do put it indoors, put it in a bright spot, which means in front of a window if you have one. (And close to the window, not 10 feet across the room. Light intensity drops very rapidly with distance from the window.)

Bugs: the odds are pretty good that your plant has picked up some insects while outside. We recommend spraying your plants before you bring them in. We have low toxicity and organic products available for this. Oils and soaps and so on. Check with our houseplant department for recommendations. Even if you don’t see anything, the odds are that, indoors in low humidity, you will eventually develop noticeable populations of mites, aphids and other pests if you don’t do a preventive spray on the way in. You probably are also going to bring some thingies in with the soil—pillbugs and earwigs. There isn’t much you can do about these guys. They don’t bother the plants too much. You can do a catch and release if you see them, usually in the saucers when you water.

Watering: as we said above, the plant has been living large and suddenly, the party is over. It likely will require less water than it needed outdoors, so check before you water. If it’s a small pot, lift it. If it’s heavy, it probably doesn’t need water. On big plants, wait until the soil is at least dry to the touch. Some of my houseplants only require water once in two or three weeks, smaller plants, weekly. But you have to check, you can’t just water on a schedule.

Humidity: indoor dry air is tough on plants, but frankly, there isn’t that much you can do. It becomes more of a problem once you start using forced-air heat. If you have a humidifier on your furnace, or a portable humidifier, that helps a lot. Misting is a waste of time. Standing plants on a tray of gravel with water in the gravel (but the pot not sitting in water) might help a little but isn’t going to work wonders.

Fertilizing (Feeding): NO NO NO. Plants eat sunlight. Fertilizer is not food, its minerals. The last thing the plant needs when you’ve taken away its sunlight and reduced its water is a load of fertilizer telling it to GROW GROW GROW. At best, you’ll get some soft spindly growth. At worst, you’ll burn the roots.

Pruning: Cut off dead branches, dead leaves. Do a little shaping, but don’t do anything drastic. Cutting off leaves reduces the amount of stored food the plant has available to it. Any radical pruning should be done in mid-spring when day length and light levels are increasing, or before you put it back outside.

The first month is the hardest. After that, the leaf drop should slow down, and the plant may even start to look perky. Continue to give it bright light, water as needed, and hold back on the fertilizer, and you should have a houseplant that makes it through to next year.

We’ve moved Larry Hurley’s terrific  overview of spring-flowering bulbs to our website – so just click here.  Thanks!

We’ve moved this valuable, evergreen article to our website! So please click here  to read Larry Hurley’s rundown on the why and how of fall planting.  

Simply Put: Perennials

In the previous post I talked about annuals. In quick summary: seed, germinate, grow, flower, flower, flower, I am so pretty, flower, flower, oh my biological clock is ticking, make seed, die. Time elapsed, one year or less.

Perennials are plants that grow for more than a year (assuming they live; it’s a life style, not a contract with God). They take their time; frequently they don’t even bloom in the first year of growth after the seed germinates.

When they do get around to blooming, perennials have shorter blooming seasons than annuals, or, if they bloom for several months, usually the first few weeks are intense and the re-bloom is more sporadic, sometimes requiring some encouragement on the part of the gardener. This might be something like shearing a couple of inches off of the top of the plant to remove the old dead flowers

Perennials tend to be either cool weather, late winter/spring bloomers or warm weather summer bloomers (but not both). There are even a few fall bloomers. The summer bloomers tend to have longer blooming periods than the spring bloomers.

We know a few things about garden center shoppers. We know that most of you a) shop in the spring, and b) you tend to buy what is in flower when you shop. Because a lot of the fun of perennial gardening is watching things change from day to day and week to week as plants grow and come into flower, you really should visit the garden center a couple of times in the summer to see what’s currently in bloom. Really. It’s for your own good.

Of perennials, it is said that the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap. So, during the first year after you plant your perennial, not that much happens. The second year (after the first winter) you have more blooms on larger plants, and the third year, they really hit their stride with much larger plants and heavier bloom. Assuming everything goes right.

Most perennials die completely down to the ground in the winter, overwintering with living bits below ground. Or, they overwinter with small tufts of foliage (leaves) above the soil. Technically, these are “herbaceous perennials.” While we are jargoning, we may as well toss in hardy, which means they tolerate some below freezing temperatures. So what we are talking about are hardy herbaceous perennials: you’ll do fine if you just say “perennials.”

There is another outdoor herbaceous group that falls between the annuals and perennials, the biennials: plants that grow without flowering the first year, flower the second, and then die (so bi-ennial; two years). These include cabbage, parsley, and foxgloves. These are sold with the vegetables, herbs, or perennials, wherever they seem to fit the best. There aren’t that many.

Why use perennials? Most people do it to save the effort of replanting annuals each year. This does save some planting time, but for a perennial garden to look good, it does require some care—cutting back old flowers and so on—so planting perennials doesn’t save much time, it just spreads it out. The real reason to choose perennials is that it allows you, should you be inclined, to “paint” with flowers. Perennials change in many dimensions over the season—height, width, color; texture of foliage (fine or broad leaves); how one color plays off the colors of surrounding plants. So, you really get to play. If you enjoy repainting your walls with new colors, then you will enjoy painting the garden with perennials.

Planting tip: perennials are best planted in groups, three or five plants of a given type. If you have a big enough space, you can repeat the group in several spots to “unite” the garden.

Simply Put: Annuals

In the horticultural world, there are three major groupings of plants intended for planting outdoors: annuals, perennials and woody plants. The differences blur a little bit because horticulturists are a more relaxed group of people than botanists, who tend to be very serious about this sort of thing. And the garden center strain of horticulturist tends to be so relaxed that we slump.

Just for the record, botanists are the basic science folks. They worry about things like what plants grow on some ledge in Patagonia and who first named them in 1712. Agronomists are applied science folks that work with field crops (wheat, corn, alfalfa) and horticulturists are also applied science folks that work with the small scale stuff—vegetables, fruits, and ornamental (decorative) plants. We’re the frosting on the cake.

So: first. Annuals.

Annuals are plants that are programmed (Mother Nature 3.0) to live their entire lives in one year (an annual life cycle). That is, they start out as a seed, grow, flower, make more seeds to start the next generation and die, all within one year or less. In the garden center, some plants that would live for more than a year in a warmer climate are sold as annuals because they croak when it gets cold (begonias, for example) or hot (pansies). So, for your purposes as a garden center shopper, you get one growing season out of an annual, and if you want to use it again next year, you have to replant.

The primary advantage to annuals is a long blooming season. A petunia planted in May should still be blooming in September. You want to plant something in a shady spot and have flowers all summer? You must plant an annual. When shopping, you will find annuals that flower well in cool weather—they may tolerate some frost–or hot weather, but not both.

When we in the garden center biz are talking about annuals we are talking about Flowers. Although vegetable plants are often annual in behavior, we just call them “vegetables.” Herbs may be annual (basil) or perennial (thyme), but we sell them by use, which is “herbs.” A bonus to you as a customer: people selling annuals (and vegetables) don’t get real hung up on Latin names. So, you can safely walk up to someone and ask for a marigold and not have anyone get snooty about it.

Because they are so colorful and relatively inexpensive to boot, garden centers sell more annuals than anything else–usually as started plants–although many annuals can be started as seed sown directly into the garden. (Some of the newer annuals such as Wave Petunias or Supertunias are grown by specialist growers from cuttings instead of seed.)

Annuals look best when planted in groups for big blocks of color, mixed or as a single variety. Gardening with annuals became popular in the late 1800’s. The practice of planting annuals in flower beds was called “bedding out,” and gave rise to the term “bedding plants” which is still used as a synonym for annuals.

Next time: perennials, woody plants, and biennials.