Fresh Air

For lots of us our garden is in our home. We don’t have lawns or flowerbeds, we don’t have a terrace or balcony. We might have a window box, but otherwise its house plants and gardening indoors. Even those with gardens often like to be around plants all the time.

Even those plants that are most perfectly adapted to living in the conditions of our homes benefit from a spell of fresh air and some dew on their leaves.

What they won’t like is great variations in temperature or sunlight so pop them outside for a few hours at a time in the morning or evening and keep them in a place that is shaded or semi-shaded. Definitely avoid putting them out on a chilly early morning or late-evening and in extremes of heavy rain or intense sunshine.

Lots of house plants thrive in certain indoor conditions such as the relative humidity of a bathroom. But wherever it is indoors the air inevitably becomes stale. If the plant is in a centrally heated room the problem is multiplied many times. Fresh oxygen encourages healthy foliage, which is the primary attraction of many house plants. And fresh moisture will in addition pep up the potting mixture around the soil.

Equally important, giving your plants some fresh air can be combined with re-potting which is ideally done from late-spring through now until June – so long as your plants are old enough. (For most house plants, rule of thumb, don’t re-pot them within the first year unless their specific instructions say so.).

Re-potting into a larger pot with fresh compost will encourage your plant to put on a growth spurt. Giving it a few hours in the fresh air will both moderate this and get it started in a healthy environment. It’s all quite obvious and easy stuff, but as well as benefiting your little treasures it helps remind you that summer is arriving.

Articles reprinted with premission from Greenfingers.com