My plants hate Winter

[baileysup]

Haha. Double post. They do though. My jade lost 50 leaves already. Can't wait till spring. Too many trees around me block the natural light. How are your plants doing in winter?

[rainbowgardener]

Not seeing a double post and I feel like I came in in the middle of a conversation.

But yes, lots of things hate the winter (including me!). My house plants, you know the typical arrowhead vine, parlor palm, dieffenbachia, dracaena, peace lily, philodendron stuff, do just fine. I have one geranium that has been blooming the whole time since I brought it in and one that is not doing as well. My big ficus (a tree that is taller than I am) is not thriving this year. Since it has done great indoors previous winters, I'm thinking that is more about soil depletion. It is a huge tree (for indoors) in a huge pot and so I haven't repotted it for a long time.

I have several variegated coleus, which gradually lose all their color over the winter from lack of light. Once they go back outside in the spring, they color up again. I think it is kind of interesting to watch. For Christmas I was given a beautiful cyclamen in full bloom. It is in a pretty low light situation, but in front of a mirror, which helps reflect some of the light back at it. It is doing pretty well, but is more sensitive to lack of water than most of my plants and keeps wilting, then perking up when it gets watered. It has kind of waxy leaves, which may not drink in the misting water as well as the other plants do. And it may be kind of pot bound, I haven't really checked.

But yeah, I don't have any really great windows, between trees, houses very close by and general poor compass orientation. I have a multi headed floor lamp that I shine on some of the plants that need the most light and everything is on plant stands, to raise them up to window height, to get the best benefit.

[applestar]

Yep. This is around when the overwintering indoor plants look the bleakest.
The shortest days around the winter solstice I think signals winter to them -- the light levels and duration diminish even with the supplemental light. And late December through January are coldest days around here -- heater cranking night and day and humidity bottoming out. I'm thinking daily morning misting is not enough right now and maybe I should be misting again sometime in the mid afternoon....

I think the lack of humidity makes the soil mix dry out faster, but the plants themselves actually slow down, and if we are not in tune to that and keep on watering the same way, we end up overwatering... Especially plants that are sensitive to "wet feet" -- at least that's what. I think *I* have been doing.

Rainbowgardener, my parents had a ficus benjamina that got too big to move in and out -- it got huge and my Dad used to give it a sort of a topiary "bowl cut" every year then bring it inside, and it would tower over the end of the living room sofa all winter. Then one autumn, he decided he didn't want to bring it inside but didn't tell me. By the time I realized, it was frozen and dead. But had I known, I could have chopped it down and tried to make a bonsai out of it. So keep that in mind if yours get too big to manage.

[rainbowgardener]

Yes, I have had that thought about chopping the ficus down for bonsai. It has a nice thick trunk and good nebari. But I grew it since it was a baby in a 4" pot sitting on a windowsill. Not quite sure I could muster the nerve to chop it....