Author: Prime Ram

That time from when the last really harsh freeze is over until you do your main planting is hugely important; it’s what makes the difference between a garden that does well and one that doesn’t. Gardeners who’ve been at it for a while use these three to six weeks (the length of time changes with where you are) to look for harm from the winter, fix things like fences or water lines, get the soil ready, and decide what you will grow. If you ignore doing all of that and just start putting plants in the ground, you’ll probably have issues that just get worse as the year goes on – soil that’s too heavy, a broken watering system, diseases that have survived the winter, and a confusing plan for what goes where, which will use up space unnecessarily and give you lots of headaches.

To set yourself up for a successful, easy season, here are ten things to do, and doing them in approximately this order is best.

1. Inspect and Repair Raised Beds and Garden Structures

The repeated freezing and thawing of winter, a lot of snow, and getting wet can all break or ruin the sides of raised beds, climbing frames for plants, fences, and cold frames (those little boxy greenhouses). If you look over all your garden structures for boards that are coming apart, metal bits that are rusty, posts that have moved, or anything that is structurally weak before you start gardening, you’ll stop things falling down in the middle of your growing. You can make shaky corners of raised beds more solid with L-shaped metal brackets or new screws. And if any wood is rotting, change it before the soil makes it rot even more.

2. Clean and Organize Tools and Supplies

Your pruning shears, hoes, and shovels will be much better after a sharpening. Metal parts should get a coating of oil to stop rust, and wood will last longer if you oil the handles to stop them from cracking. Plus, give everything a general clean. It’s a good idea to look at your seeds, get them in order, and see if they’re still good to use, throwing out anything really old or if you’re not sure about them, and figuring out what more you’ll need. Finally, before you need to use it, check your watering system for any broken connectors, blocked sprayers, or broken pipes.

 

3. Remove Winter Mulch and Debris

As the weather gets warmer, slowly remove that layer of winter protection from your garden beds. This lets the soil heat up with the sun. Get rid of all the old, dead stuff from last year – things like dried up stems, dropped leaves, and bits of old crops – and put it in your compost. If you leave all that old plant matter lying around, it’s a place for diseases to spend the winter, and for bugs to lay their eggs, and they can then get into your new plants.

4. Test Soil Temperature

A really typical error people make in spring is getting things in the ground while the soil is still cold. To avoid wasting seeds and having your planting fall apart, it’s a good idea to use a soil thermometer to be certain the ground has warmed up to at least as much as the seeds need to start growing. Soil at 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit is fine for plants that like cool weather, but for tomatoes, peppers, and things like those, you’ll want to be patient and hold off until the temperature is at 60 degrees Fahrenheit or above, and is staying there down to four inches into the soil.

5. Amend Soil With Compost

Put a layer of finished compost, one or two inches thick, over your garden beds and dig it into the soil to a depth of four to six inches. This returns goodness to the soil that the plants from last year used up and also makes the soil itself better. In fact, doing this with compost every year is the most helpful thing you can do to look after your soil if you’re growing vegetables organically. And if you’ve had your soil tested (and you should every three or four years), now is the time to add in anything that test showed you need, like lime, sulfur or particular feeds.

6. Edge Beds and Define Pathways

During the time when your garden isn’t growing, grass and weeds will start to grow into the areas where your plants are. Going around each garden bed and making a neat, sharp edge with a spade or a half-moon edger puts a clear line back in place and gets rid of the roots of those grasses which would steal water and food from your vegetables. As for the paths, replacing the mulch (so wood chips, gravel, or straw are good) will stop them from becoming muddy when it rains in spring, and will give you nice surfaces to walk on between the beds.

 

7. Set Up or Test Irrigation Systems

Before you actually have to use them on your plants, get your drip lines, soaker hoses, and sprinklers all hooked up, get water flowing through them and let them go through a complete operation. Doing this beforehand shows you where there are any holes, blocked bits, or broken parts, so you can fix them when you have time. That’s much better than realizing something’s wrong with your watering during a really hot spell when everything is suffering.

8. Start Indoor Seeds on Schedule

To figure out the best time to begin growing each thing inside, look at a seed starting calendar for your area and work back from when the very last frost will happen. If you start seeds much too early, you’ll get plants that are too big and have all their roots tangled. Begin too late, and you’ll lose valuable time in the growing season. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other plants which like the heat generally want six to eight weeks of growing inside before they go in the ground. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, and the kinds of plants which prefer cooler temperatures usually only need four to six weeks inside.

9. Plan the Garden Layout

If you write out or quickly draw your garden layout, or even just make a basic list of what you’re planting in each area, you’ll avoid putting plants too close together and give them the room they need. This also makes it easier to rotate your crops (so you don’t plant something from the same family in the same spot for two years running), and you’ll be able to see when you have empty spaces in your planting times. You can fill those with another planting, or quick-growing plants to get the most out of your garden.

10. Direct Sow Early Cool-Season Crops

You’re holding off on putting out things like tomatoes and peppers until the danger of frost is over. However, you can absolutely start planting right now by putting some seeds directly in the garden. Peas, spinach, radishes, lettuce, arugula, carrots…all of these can go in the ground four to six weeks before the last frost is predicted. Planting these earlier uses the cool, damp weather they thrive in, and you’ll be eating from them weeks before your main summer garden gets going.

Key Takeaway

Getting a spring garden ready happens in a sensible order. You should look at and fix things like raised beds and trellises, then get your tools clean. Old leaves, branches and other stuff from winter should be cleared away and the soil’s temperature should be checked. After that, work some compost into the ground, neatly define the garden beds, and make sure your watering system is functioning. Starting seeds inside at the right time is also important, as is deciding how you’ll arrange everything and putting in the first seeds for things that like cooler weather. If you get all ten of these things done in the three to six weeks before your main planting, you’ll have a neat and ready space to grow a garden that will be both productive and easy to deal with all year long.

What you do to your garden in the autumn really impacts how well it does next spring. If you just walk away from a garden after the final harvest, leaving the old plants in place, the earth uncovered for the winter rains and freezing, and your tools to get rusty, then you’ll have a lot of fixing to do in spring. Plus, the soil will likely be in worse condition, you’ll have more weeds, and diseases might still be around. However, a garden given some careful attention in the fall, for just a little while, will be snug with improved and sheltered soil and when it’s time to plant, you’ll have a lot less to do.

Remove Spent Crops and Plant Debris

If you leave sick plant parts in the garden all winter, they become a home for things that will harm your new plants in the spring – fungal spores, bacterial diseases, and insect eggs. You should get rid of all your vegetable plants when they’re done, pulling them up with the roots. If they didn’t have any sickness while they were growing, you can put them in your compost. But if they did show signs of disease, you’ll want to get rid of them with your city’s yard waste collection. Also, wipe down tomato cages, supports and climbing frames with watered-down bleach, then put them somewhere protected from the weather to stop them rusting or holding onto diseases for next year.

 

Add Compost and Amendments

Autumn is a perfect time for adding compost, well-rotted manure, lime if your soil is too acidic, or any other soil improvement that takes a while to become useful, because over the whole winter they’ll decompose and mix with the earth, so that when you start planting in springtime, they’re ready. A layer of two or three inches of compost spread over bare garden beds and gently mixed into the top part of the soil will give your spring plants a continuing supply of food during their very important first stage of growing. Soil improvements done in the fall start to do things in the spring sooner than those you add at the time of planting.

Plant a Cover Crop — Or Apply Winter Mulch

When the ground is left bare over the winter, it gets worn away by the weather, gets pressed down, loses its goodness as nutrients get washed out, and a hard surface forms on top which makes water from the spring not soak in. To stop all that from happening, you can either plant a cover crop or use a generous helping of winter mulch. Cover crops – like winter rye, crimson clover, hairy vetch, or combinations of these – are planted in September or October and will grow during autumn, then become inactive for the winter. Their roots will keep the soil in place. Then in early spring, you chop the plants down and dig them into the soil, which improves the soil with organic matter and, if you’ve used beans or peas as your cover crop, with nitrogen. Alternatively, if you’d rather not look after a growing cover crop, a layer of shredded leaves, straw, or wood chips, four to six inches thick, will do a similar job of protecting the soil and can be moved to the side or worked into the ground in the spring.

Record What Worked and What Didn’t

The most helpful thing you can do in the winter garden doesn’t involve anything to do with the garden or tools. While the season is still in your mind, write down what did well, what didn’t, and anything else you noticed. Think about which varieties of plants gave you a good harvest and which ones were a letdown. Also, where did you have issues with bugs, which areas of your garden gave you the biggest harvests, and which gave you the smallest? And how did the weather impact your different plants? You can keep this information in an ordinary notebook, a computer spreadsheet, or a gardening app. It will then be what you use to make better plans for next year. Gardeners who have been doing this for years will tell you that looking back and planning is more important for improving your garden over time than any particular method or item you buy.

 

Key Takeaway

Getting your garden ready for fall really comes down to four main things. You need to get rid of plants that have finished producing and any old bits that could be spreading illness. Then you should mix compost and other improvements into the earth to slowly work their way in while it’s cold. Exposed soil should be sheltered with a cover crop or a nice thick layer of mulch. And importantly, jot down what happened this season – what grew well, what didn’t – to help with planning for next year. This doesn’t take long, probably a few hours, but it will give you noticeably better soil, mean fewer weeds and problems with disease and make a huge difference in the spring. You’ll be able to get straight to planting instead of fixing things up.

Lots of people with home gardens start to lose their gardening enthusiasm in August. Spring planting is long over, you’re getting a lot of produce from what you already planted in summer, and it just feels like the garden’s life is slowing down. Agricultural advisors, however, are quite clear that August is a hugely important month for gardening. It’s a vital shift in time, and what you do in the garden during this period will be the deciding factor between continuing to get fresh food all the way to November or having the garden stop producing by September. A number of things needing doing must happen this month, or you’ll miss your chance to do them altogether.

1. Plant Fall Crops Immediately

Getting fall crops started is the most urgent thing to do in August. For a good harvest before a really cold freeze hits, you need to plant (or put in transplants of) lettuce, spinach, kale, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, peas, cilantro, and broccoli by roughly the middle of August in places with typical seasons. Each week you don’t get to them in August means you’ll have two or three weeks less of picking from them in the fall. This is because as fall comes on, days get shorter and temperatures drop, and both of those steadily slow down how much the plants grow.

2. Order and Plant Garlic for Next Year

If you want to plant garlic in the fall—and for most areas that’s October or November—you should get your seed garlic from a supplier in August. The kinds everyone wants disappear fast. If you hold off until October to order, you’ll probably have to take what’s available, and that might not be the best type for where you live or how you like to cook.

 

3. Harvest Consistently to Keep Plants Producing

Lots of vegetables, including beans, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes, will produce less or no new fruit if you let the fruit already on the plant get totally ripe. The plant thinks when the fruit gets to its full size that it has done its job of making more plants and therefore makes fewer flowers and less fruit. If you pick them every two or three days when they’re making loads, you’ll keep these veggies steadily producing and get a harvest for many more weeks.

4. Deal With Late-Season Pests Before They Overwinter

If you let pest numbers climb all through August without doing anything about it, they’ll lay eggs that will live in the ground and amongst the discarded stuff in your garden, and you’ll have a much worse situation on your hands next spring. Don’t just assume squash vine borers, tomato hornworms, cabbage loopers, and Japanese beetles are something you have to deal with at this time of year, you need to really get on top of them. Getting rid of any plants that are affected and destroying them, physically taking pests off when you see them, and using suitable organic treatments now will lower the amount of trouble you have with pests next year a lot.

5. Water Deeply and Consistently

When it gets really hot in August, and things are dry, that’s typically why gardens start to do poorly later in the year. If plants don’t get enough water in August, their fruit will be smaller and not as good, they’ll get attacked by bugs more easily, and they could even stop making fruit. To keep plants growing well during the heat, give them one or two inches of water each week by using drip irrigation or soaking the ground deeply, and also top up the mulch because it breaks down over the summer.

6. Save Seeds From Best-Performing Plants

Lots of crops are at their best for seed saving in August. Now is the time to gather and prepare seeds from tomatoes, peppers, beans, herbs – in fact, anything in your garden that’s grown brilliantly, and whose fruit or seed heads are perfectly ripe. Each year, if you pick seeds from the strongest, most fruitful plants, the seeds you save will slowly but surely get better at growing in your garden.

 

7. Prune and Rejuvenate Herb Plants

If your herbs are long and stretched out, have developed tough wooden stems, or are covered in blossoms by August, a really good trim is what they need. You should cut off between a third and half of the way down the plant. This will encourage lots of nice soft new growth for you to use in cooking all through the fall and will likely mean the plant won’t “go to sleep” for several weeks longer. Basil, oregano, thyme, sage, all do wonderfully with a strong prune in August.

8. Plan and Order Spring-Flowering Bulbs

You plant tulips, daffodils, crocuses, alliums and lots of other bulbs that bloom in spring in the autumn – specifically between September and November. However, for the widest choice of what to grow, you should buy them in August. Much like with garlic, the most requested types of bulbs are quickly gone, and ordering in August means they’ll arrive before it’s the best time to put them in the ground for fall.

Key Takeaway

August is a hugely important month in the garden, it’s definitely not when you can just relax. You need to get fall crops in the ground, order your garlic and flower bulbs, harvest your produce regularly, deal with any bugs, make sure your plants are getting water, collect seeds, trim your herbs and think about what comes next. All these things have to happen fairly soon, by early September at the latest. If you really do things in August, instead of just picking what’s ready, you can keep getting good results for eight to ten weeks longer, and next spring will be so much simpler.

In many typical climates, the time when there’s no danger of frost (between the last frost of spring and the first of autumn) lasts from 120 to 180 days, and how long that is changes with where you are. Lots of gardeners find this isn’t long enough, especially further north where the last spring frost might not happen until late May, and the first fall one is here by mid-September. However, the season’s length isn’t set in stone. By using easy, inexpensive ways to protect plants from the cold, people with gardens can extend the time they can actually grow things by four to eight weeks, planting in the spring earlier and getting the harvest in later in the fall, and all without needing heated greenhouses or a lot of expensive additions.

Row Covers: The Most Versatile Protection

In many typical climates, the time when there’s no danger of frost (between the last frost of spring and the first of autumn) lasts from 120 to 180 days, and how long that is changes with where you are. Lots of gardeners find this isn’t long enough, especially further north where the last spring frost might not happen until late May, and the first fall one is here by mid-September. However, the season’s length isn’t set in stone. By using easy, inexpensive ways to protect plants from the cold, people with gardens can extend the time they can actually grow things by four to eight weeks, planting in the spring earlier and getting the harvest in later in the fall, and all without needing heated greenhouses or a lot of expensive additions.

 

Low Tunnels: A Step Up in Protection

Low tunnels are like little greenhouses for single garden beds, being made from arched hoops of wire, PVC, or conduit and then covered with plastic or lightweight fabric. Inside them on a sunny day, the air gets much warmer than the temperature around it, and this warms the soil and then slowly releases heat to the plants when it gets dark. Using clear plastic for a low tunnel can mean the inside is ten to twenty degrees warmer than the air outside, and will protect plants from even a 20°F frost. However, you do have to think about the air inside; on sunny days, you’ll have to open the tunnel at either the ends or sides to stop things from getting too hot, and on cold nights, you need to seal it up to keep as much of that heat in as possible.

Cold Frames: The Permanent Season Extender

Essentially a box with no bottom and a clear lid (people used to use old window frames for the lid), a cold frame uses the heat stored in its walls and the way the lid traps sunlight (the greenhouse effect) to make a little protected area with a different climate. This can keep plants that can handle the cold going all the way down to 10 or 15 degrees. Cold frames are great for getting through the winter with salad greens, spinach, and other plants which are ok in the cold and will slowly grow during the winter in areas classified as zones 5 to 7. If you live in a colder zone, the cold frame holds plants in a sort of pause until the longer days of February and March tell them to start growing again, giving you something to eat from your garden weeks earlier than you could if you waited to plant outside.

Choosing the Right Crops for Season Extension

You’ll get the most from extending the growing season with plants that are already happy when it’s cool. Lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, chard, mâche, claytonia, and Asian greens do very well protected from the elements in cooler temperatures, and they can handle a bit of frost or even a moderate freeze just fine. Similarly, root vegetables such as carrots, beets, turnips and radishes are successful under covers that extend the season. Tomatoes and peppers, which like it warm, can get a start in spring using row covers or tunnels for earlier planting. But when it comes to the fall, they aren’t good for extending the season. As soon as nighttime temperatures are consistently below 50°F, they’ll stop making fruit and quickly get worse, and this happens even if you have some kind of frost protection.

 

Key Takeaway

Row covers, low tunnels, and cold frames offer more and more protection against frost. Row covers protect plants from 4 to 8 degrees of frost, low tunnels from 10 to 20 degrees, and cold frames will even keep them safe down to 10°F. Importantly, these are all cheap, don’t use any electricity, and can significantly lengthen how long you can grow things at the beginning and end of the season, particularly if you’re growing lettuce, spinach, kale, root vegetables, or other plants that tolerate the cold. In fact, if you focus on extending the season with these types of plants that naturally handle the cold, you’ll have the best and easiest results.

You’ll see plant labels, seed catalogues, and gardening writing all the time mentioning “hardiness zones”. These are numbers like Zone 5b, 7a, or 9, and they’re meant to let gardeners know if a long-living plant (a perennial, tree, or shrub) is probably going to get through the winter where they live. Yet, even though almost everyone uses them, hardiness zones are often not understood correctly. A lot of gardeners seem to think they describe a whole climate, but in fact, they only show one particular thing. Knowing what a hardiness zone can and can’t tell you about gardening helps you avoid being sad because you’ve grown something that won’t survive, and also from missing out on a plant which would do brilliantly.

What Hardiness Zones Measure

All over North America, people use the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. It splits the continent into thirteen zones and does this with just one thing in mind: the usual coldest temperature in winter. In Zone 1, winters typically get to between minus 60 and minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, while Zone 13 has average winter temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Within each of those zones are ‘a’ and ‘b’ sections, and these show five degree Fahrenheit differences. If a plant is labelled as ‘hardy to Zone 6’ you can expect it to survive the average lowest winter temperature for Zone 6, which is from minus 10 to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Hardiness zones only tell you about winter cold, not summer heat, how much moisture is in the air, rainfall, the kind of soil, how high up you are or for how long plants can grow.

 

What Hardiness Zones Do Not Measure

Hardiness zones tell you if a plant can withstand the cold of winter, but they don’t say anything about how it will do in hot summers – and summer heat is just as crucial in many places. So, a plant that will survive the winter in zone 5 might get scorched by the really hot summer temperatures in some zone 5 areas. The American Horticultural Society did create a heat zone map, which uses the amount of time each year temperatures go over 86°F to categorize locations, but far fewer people use this heat map compared to the USDA’s cold zone map. Also, how well a plant grows is really impacted by rainfall, how well the soil drains, how humid it is, how much wind it’s exposed to and the length of the day, yet neither of these zone systems take those things into account.

How to Find and Use Hardiness Zone Information

You can find your particular plant hardiness zone on a free, interactive map from the USDA. All you do is put in your zip code. Then, when you’re picking out plants that will come back year after year (perennials), trees, bushes, or things you’ll grow through the winter, you should look at the hardiness zone range on the plant label or in the seed catalogue and match it to your zone. Plants that are rated for your zone, or one that’s colder, will almost certainly be fine. A plant for a zone that’s one step warmer than yours is a bit of a gamble; it might make it in a protected spot or during a not-too-cold winter, but it won’t necessarily last. And plants rated for two or even more warmer zones? They likely won’t get through a normal winter unless you do something special to protect them.

Microclimates: When Your Zone Isn’t Quite Right

Because of things like buildings, the shape of the land, how the wind moves, or how much heat is held by materials on it, every piece of land has its own little pockets of different temperatures, which we call microclimates. For example, a wall that faces south and collects warmth from the sun will then give off that warmth and make a small area a whole zone warmer than the rest of the garden. And a spot that’s lower than everything else is likely to collect cold air on calm evenings, making it a zone colder. If you’re a careful gardener and notice these microclimates, you can often get plants that are officially listed for one hardiness zone beyond your area to thrive by putting them in the warmest spot. However, if you put a plant that’s only just hardy enough to survive in your zone into the coldest little zone on your land, it’s almost certain to die, even though the overall zone rating would say it should live.

 

The 2023 Map Update and What Changed

In 2023 the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a revised plant hardiness zone map. This new map uses temperature information gathered from 1991 to 2020, a thirty year period. Roughly 50% of the US is now in a warmer zone than shown on the last map from 2012. Gardeners will find that some plants which previously might not have survived a winter in their area, likely will do just fine. The changes also point to some plants that don’t like a lot of heat potentially being more troubled by hot weather in the summer. For the best choices about what to grow, it’s best to look at your current zone on the new map, rather than relying on older guides, to use the most up to date climate details.

Key Takeaway

USDA plant hardiness zones tell you just the typical lowest temperature in winter for a place. They don’t consider summer heat, how much moisture there is in the air, precipitation, or the type of soil. When you pick plants that are listed as being good for your zone or a zone that gets even colder, you’ll have the best chance of them living through the winter. Also, if you find warmer areas near the south sides of walls or colder spots in dips in the land (these are microclimates) you might be able to grow things that are rated for a zone a little warmer or colder than yours. The newest USDA map came out in 2023 and lots of regions are now in warmer zones, so looking at the current zone for your area before you plant anything is a good idea.

Getting the water right is the biggest thing for houseplants to live, and it’s what people mess up most. Houseplant experts believe overwatering and not giving enough water cause over eighty percent of houseplants to die. Essentially, how much water a plant needs changes a lot, depending on the type of plant, the time of year, or even where in your house a plant is. What keeps a tropical pothos healthy could make a succulent rot in just weeks, and a watering plan that is perfect in the moistness of July might let the same plant get terribly dehydrated in the dry heat of February.

Instead of sticking to a set schedule for watering, people who are good with houseplants pay attention to what’s happening around them and feel the soil before they water. This way of doing things adjusts to the changes in conditions and pretty much always stops you from both drowning and drying out your plants.

Why Fixed Watering Schedules Fail

You’ll find “water your houseplants once a week” in lots of places, but people who really know about plants say not to do that. How quickly the soil in a pot gets dry is down to lots of things: the size and what the pot is made of (smaller pots made of terra cotta dry out quicker than bigger plastic ones), how bright the light is (plants in brighter light will use more water), the temperature and how much moisture in the air (warm, dry air makes water disappear faster) and what’s in the soil (soils with lots of peat hold onto water better than those with bark) and finally, how much water the plant itself loses through its leaves (big-leaved tropical plants are thirstier than small succulents). A plant needing water every three days during summer might only need it every ten to fourteen days in winter. This is because the light is weaker, heating makes the air drier and the plant isn’t growing so rapidly.

 

The Finger Test: Simple, Free, and Reliable

To find out if your houseplant is thirsty, and it’s the best way to do it, just push your finger down into the soil one or two inches before you water. If it feels wet at that level, don’t water the plant, even if the very top of the soil is dry – the soil underneath is often still moist enough. But, if the soil is dry when you check an inch or two down, your plant can have a drink. Doing this every time is a much better way to avoid both too much and too little water than using anything automatic, a moisture meter, or just going by the calendar.

Moisture meters can be helpful to have around, but they aren’t as good as using your finger. Cheap, older-style moisture meters are famous for being wrong, frequently saying the soil is wet when it’s in fact quite dry. Digital ones are better, but they’ll still need to be adjusted and you should now and then check the soil with your finger to make sure the meter is correct.

How to Water Thoroughly

If your houseplant is thirsty, water it slowly, letting the water run out of the drainage holes. This gets water to all the roots, even the lowest ones at the bottom of the pot. If you only water the very top of the soil, perhaps an inch or two down, the roots will stay near the surface. They won’t go deeper into the pot and this makes for a weaker root system, which will dry out easily and is more likely to be damaged by being too wet. You should get rid of any water that builds up in the tray under the pot in under half an hour, because letting the pot sit in water will cause the roots to rot.

Adjusting for Seasonal Changes

Because of less daylight and weaker light in autumn and winter, most plants you have inside will naturally grow less. Since they aren’t growing as much, they won’t use as much water, so you’ll likely need to water them much less often, typically 30 to 50% less than in spring and summer. Watering as often as you did in the summer during the winter is a big reason indoor plants get root rot. But when spring comes and the days get longer, plants start growing strongly again and need more water. Instead of sticking to a set calendar for watering, it’s better to see how quickly the soil dries out between waterings; this way you’ll water at a rate that matches what the plant really wants at any time of the year.

 

Key Takeaway

Instead of watering houseplants on a set day, you should always check how wet the soil is first. Poking your finger an inch or two into the soil is the best way to find out if it needs a drink. While you are watering, do it slowly and let water flow out of the drainage holes at the bottom; this will get all the roots thoroughly wet. Then, within half an hour, pour out any water that collects in the tray under the pot, or it could lead to root rot. As plants grow more slowly and don’t use as much water in the darker, winter months, you should water them only about 30 to 50 percent as often.

Many people think they’re not able to keep houseplants alive because they don’t get enough light. Rooms that face north, flats in basements, offices away from exterior walls, and bathrooms lacking windows are all difficult for most houseplants to live in. In fact, most of the houseplants we often choose won’t do well in them. However, some plants originally grew on the forest floor or under the dense shade of trees in the tropics, and they’ve changed over time to live and even do well with very little light. These are the plants that will allow you to have something green and living in rooms that almost all other plants would find impossible to survive in.

When experts at gardens and plant places talk about “low light” for houseplants, they mean 50 to 250 foot-candles. This is about the amount of light you get four to eight feet from a north-facing window, or in a room with no direct sun but with light from a ceiling fixture. The plants listed below can not only survive in this amount of light, but will happily and beautifully grow for a long time. Sunlight-loving plants would get sick and weaken within weeks in the same conditions.

1. Pothos (Epipremnum aureum)

Most people say pothos are the easiest houseplants to keep alive. They deal with pretty much anything – low light, forgetting to water them regularly, temperatures going up and down, and just general being left alone, all of which would be fatal to many other plants. If they aren’t getting much light, pothos will grow all green leaves instead of the mixes of colours you see when they are in a brighter spot, but they’ll still be fine and keep on growing. You can have pothos growing down from a high shelf, up a mossy stick, or spilling out of a basket that hangs from the ceiling, so they fit with almost any room style.

2. Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata)

Snake plants are right up there with the easiest houseplants to keep alive, and they do very well in low light. Their thick, standing leaves hold onto water really well, so you can easily forget about watering them for weeks, and that’s good because low light causes them to grow slowly anyway. They’re not bothered by many temperatures and hardly ever get pests, meaning they pretty much look after themselves in darker rooms.

3. ZZ Plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia)

ZZ plants are able to live with almost no care for many months. This is because their thick, wax-covered leaves and fat, root-like stems under the soil are excellent at holding onto water and energy. When they don’t get much light, they’ll barely grow, maybe only producing a stem or two during the year. Even so, their leaves will remain shiny and healthy for a very long time. What’s more, ZZ plants are among the fairly small number of houseplants that happily put up with only the fluorescent lights you usually find in offices that don’t have windows.

 

4. Cast Iron Plant (Aspidistra elatior)

People call the cast iron plant ‘cast iron’ because it’s unbelievably tough. It originally comes from the very shady forests of Japan and Taiwan and is amazingly able to handle poor light, not being watered on a schedule, changes in temperature, and very dry air – basically the usual winter situation in most of our houses! It doesn’t get much bigger in a hurry, but its large, dark green leaves make a lovely, strong look in darker hallways or corners of a room.

5. Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum)

Peace lilies are among the not very many flowering plants you can count on to bloom even when they don’t get much light. They do get more blooms with brighter conditions, but even in a fairly dark room, peace lilies will still put out those white spathes from time to time. Their shiny, dark green leaves look good all the time, plus they really let you know when they’re thirsty. They get very droopy when they’re drying out, but they bounce right back to life after you water them, so you don’t have to be perfect about remembering to water them.

6. Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema)

There are loads of different kinds of Aglaonama, and their leaves have really noticeable patterns in shades of silver, pink, red, and cream all set against a dark green. Even though they look colourful, most of them will happily manage in quite low or average light and won’t lose those striking colours. They don’t grow quickly, so you’ll hardly ever have to get them into a bigger pot, they’re not bothered by the dry air we get inside, and most houseplant bugs leave them alone. Because of all these things, they’re unbelievably easy to look after in rooms that aren’t very bright.

7. Philodendron (Heartleaf Variety)

The heartleaf philodendron (Philodendron hederaceum) is a plant that trails as it grows and is pretty easy to look after, just like a pothos. However, its leaves are noticeably different; they’re heart shaped, a deep green and have a bit of a shine to them. It does really well in dim light, and you can more or less ignore it, so if you have lots of plants that like the shade and want something different, it’s a great choice.

8. Dracaena (Multiple Species)

Lots of Dracaena varieties, for instance the dragon tree (D. marginata), the corn plant (D. fragrans), and what used to be called Sansevieria and is now D. trifasciata, are happy in quite low light. They’re quite striking in appearance and add height, a vertical element to rooms that don’t get much light, and most tall plants would simply not do well in those places. Dracaenas are a bit bothered by fluoride which is in normal tap water, and this makes the ends of their leaves turn brown. You can stop this from happening, though it’s only how they look that’s affected, by using water that’s been filtered or distilled.

 

9. Parlor Palm (Chamaedorea elegans)

People have had parlor palms as houseplants all the way back to Victorian times; they used to brighten up the dark rooms (parlors) from which the palm gets its popular name. Most palms won’t do well inside because they need bright light and moist air, but these ones are small, don’t grow fast, and can handle both poor light and a lack of humidity. When fully grown, a parlor palm is three or four feet tall and adds a bit of the tropics to any area, from a tiny flat to a huge workplace.

10. Prayer Plant (Maranta leuconeura)

Prayer plants get their name because their leaves fold up at night, looking like praying hands. Their leaves have complicated designs, with reds, pinks or silver veins showing up against the dark green and they are really beautiful to look at in rooms that don’t get much light. These plants like the soil to be kept damp (but not swimming in water), and they thrive in humid conditions, so bathrooms and kitchens with little sun are perfect for them.

11. Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum)

Spider plants are really tough and get used to lots of different situations, and they’ll do well in all sorts of light, from fairly bright but not direct sun to quite dark. You’ll get more of those little “babies” (the plants on the stems that hang down) if they’re in a brighter place, but the main plant’s leaves will still be nice and green even if it isn’t. Plus, NASA’s Clean Air Study showed spider plants are excellent at cleaning the air in your house, which is a nice extra when you’re inside.

12. Calathea (Multiple Species)

People really love calatheas because of their amazingly decorated leaves which have stripes, spots and blocks of colour in green, purple, pink, silver or a mixture of these. Calatheas as they grow in the deepest shade on rainforest floors are already used to the low light levels you get inside our homes. They are a little fussy compared to other plants on this list and you need to be steady with both how much moisture they have and how often you water them. However, when it comes to looking good in a darker room, no other plant that does well in the shade comes anywhere near them.

Key Takeaway

You can absolutely still have thriving houseplants even if you don’t get much sun. Plants like pothos, snake plants, ZZ plants, cast iron plants, peace lilies, Chinese evergreens, heartleaf philodendrons, dracaenas, parlor palms, prayer plants, spider plants and calatheas originally grew in shady spots and will continue to grow nicely and look good in rooms that aren’t very bright. To really make it work in a darker room, choose plants for how much light you do have and water them less often, because they’ll grow more slowly in the dimness.

Eventually, all houseplants will get too big for their pots. The roots, having taken up all the room in the pot, start to grow in circles around the inside of it. Water will then flow right through the soil instead of being soaked up, and even with plenty of light and food, the plant will grow more slowly or not at all. All of this shows your plant is “root-bound” and requires a bigger pot with new potting soil. But, if you repot in a rough way – at a bad time of year, into a pot that’s too big or too small, or not doing it quite right – you can really upset the plant, causing it to droop, lose leaves, and stop growing for weeks. Knowing how to do it correctly will stop the plant from being shocked when you move it, and it will get back to growing strongly in its new place quickly.

When to Repot

Generally, late winter to early summer is the perfect time to move your houseplants to a larger pot. This is when they’re growing most strongly and have lots of light to bounce back after having their roots messed with. If you repot in the dead of winter when they aren’t doing much and there isn’t much light, they’re more likely to get transplant shock or root rot. The plant just won’t be able to put down new roots fast enough to take advantage of the new soil. You’ll know it’s time to repot if roots are poking out of the bottom, water is just sitting on top of the soil instead of soaking in, the plant gets dry within a day or two of being watered, you can see the roots going in a circle around the inside of the pot when you carefully get the plant out, or the plant has stopped or slowed down growing even though you’re looking after it properly.

 

Choosing the Right Size Container

When you get a new pot, it shouldn’t be much bigger than the one your plant is in now, just an inch or two wider across the top. A lot of people, hoping they won’t have to repot again for a long time, make the mistake of going to a really big pot. But that much extra soil is more than the roots can handle. Because the roots won’t use all that extra damp soil, it stays wet, and being overly wet leads to root rot. Increasing the pot size by only an inch or two gives the roots room to grow for a year or two, while also making sure the amount of soil and roots are balanced for good drainage, and air circulation.

The Repotting Process

Give the plant a really good watering the day before you take it out of its old pot. Watered roots bend more easily and are much less likely to snap than dry ones. Tip the pot onto its side and carefully get the plant and all its roots out. If the roots are wound really tightly around the bottom or sides of the root ball, gently use your fingers or a clean knife to loosen or make some cuts in the outside of the roots. This will get them to grow out into the new soil, instead of continuing to go in a circle. Put a layer of new potting mix in the bottom of the new pot, then put the plant in the pot so the top of the root ball is about a half inch from the top of the pot. Then, fill the rest of the space around the root ball with fresh potting mix. Lightly press the soil down, but don’t make it too firm; roots require air in the soil to do their job. Water it well right after you’ve potted it up, to help the soil settle and get rid of any bubbles of air around the roots.

Minimizing Transplant Shock

For a week or two after you’ve moved your plant to its new pot, it needs to sit in good, bright light that isn’t direct sunshine. This lets the new roots get used to the fresh soil. Don’t feed it any fertilizer for a month or so after repotting. New potting soil already has all the goodness it needs, and the roots are a little vulnerable when they’re settling in and can easily be ‘burned’ by fertilizer. A bit of drooping in the first few days is totally fine and the plant will usually be back to normal within seven days as the roots get over being disturbed. However, if it’s seriously drooping and doesn’t improve after a week, the roots might have been hurt during repotting or the pot could be too big, and the roots are sitting in too much water.

 

Key Takeaway

To repot a plant well, pick a new pot that’s just an inch or two wider all the way around, and do it when the plant is actively growing. Before setting it in new potting soil, gently loosen any roots that are circling around. Then, give it nice bright but not direct sunlight and don’t fertilize for a month or so, giving the roots time to get used to their new surroundings. Don’t be tempted to put it into a huge container, or the soil will stay too wet and the roots will rot. This is how most plants die after being repotted. If you do it right, nearly all houseplants will start to grow as they were before in fourteen to twenty-one days.

Lots of houseplant care tips are all over social media, gardening blogs and plant apps nowadays. A lot of this advice is correct, but quite a few very common things people say just aren’t backed up by science. These ideas hang around because they seem to make sense, because people who love plants and have had luck (even if it wasn’t because of what they did!) have passed them on, and because to really say they’re wrong, you’d need to understand how plants work in a way most simple guides don’t bother with. Knowing what really works and what doesn’t means you can spend your time on the care that will truly do something for your plants.

Myth 1: Ice Cubes Are a Good Way to Water Orchids

A big orchid seller started telling people to give their orchids two or three ice cubes to sit on the soil each week, as a way of making orchid care look easy. However, experts in how plants function say orchids are from the tropics and their roots are built for lovely, warm rain, not ice. If you put ice right on the orchid roots or close to them, you can actually hurt the plant’s tissues, and that’s especially true for the velamen. Velamen is the spongy outer layer of the roots which drinks up water. The American Orchid Society and nearly all horticultural courses at universities suggest you water orchids with water that’s at room temperature, and let it flow all the way through the soil until it comes out of the bottom.

Myth 2: Misting Provides Meaningful Humidity for Tropical Plants

Spraying your houseplants with water to make them more humid is something a lot of people do, but it doesn’t really help much. Those little droplets of water from the spray disappear in just minutes, and the little bit of humidity they give off is gone almost as quickly. Tropical plants like calatheas, ferns, alocasias, and others needing lots of humidity actually need a humidity level of 50 to 60 percent or even more that spraying won’t hold for any length of time. To get humidity up properly you could put your plants in a bunch together (as all of their leaves releasing water will increase the humidity around them), set the plant pots on trays of pebbles and water (the water evaporating will make a more humid area right around the plants), or use a humidifier and set it for 50 to 60 percent. And spraying water on the leaves can also make fungal problems start on plants with fuzzy or interestingly textured leaves.

 

Myth 3: Putting Rocks in the Bottom of a Pot Improves Drainage

Lots of people believe in putting a layer of gravel or stones in the bottom of a pot before you put the soil in, but this is a really common mistake in container gardening. Soil science has shown over and over that gravel doesn’t help water drain; instead, it builds a sort of water line where the gravel and soil meet. This means water gathers in the soil above the stones, not going through them. The soil has to be completely soaked through before gravity will manage to pull the water down through the difference in texture and into the coarser gravel. Essentially, the area where the roots are will remain soggy for a longer period of time than if you’d just used soil filling the whole pot. Good drainage comes from using a soil mix that drains well, and having enough drainage holes in your pot, not from adding stones to the bottom.

Myth 4: Talking to Plants Helps Them Grow

People have believed since the 1970s, thanks to a bunch of books saying so, that plants react to us when we talk to them. Plants do respond to shaking (wind making their stems thicker is an example of this), but the sound of our voices isn’t strong enough to cause that. When scientists have carefully compared the growth of plants listened to and plants in quiet, they’ve never found any actual difference. The reason people’s plants seem to do better if they are talked to is probably because those people are around their plants more, and because of this they find bugs more quickly, water them at just the right time, and give them all-round better attention.

Myth 5: Brown Leaf Tips Always Mean the Air Is Too Dry

Some tropical plants get brown leaf tips if the air is very dry, but a lot of other fairly typical things do the same thing. These include not watering regularly, letting the soil become too dry between each time, too much fluoride or chlorine in your tap water, using too much fertilizer which causes salt to build up and “burn” the leaves, roots being harmed by being kept too wet, and the leaf being damaged just by brushing against a cold window. If you just add more humidity because of those brown tips, without looking into what’s really going on, you might not fix the issue. So, before you change the humidity, you should carefully look at how often you water, what your water is like, and how much fertilizer you’re using.

 

Myth 6: Repotting Should Be Done Every Year

Lots of plant care advice says to repot every year, but most indoor plants, and especially slower growers like snake plants, ZZ plants, rubber plants, are perfectly happy staying in the same pot for two, three or even more years without getting sick. Repotting when it isn’t needed bothers the roots, stresses the plant out when you move it, and makes it much easier to give it too much water in a pot that’s too big. You should only repot when the plant tells you to – when the roots are crammed in, are poking out of the bottom, or the water goes straight on through instead of being soaked up. Don’t do it just because of the date!

Myth 7: All Houseplants Purify Indoor Air

The idea that houseplants are really good at cleaning the air inside our homes comes from a 1989 NASA study. It did show that some plants can get rid of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from totally closed spaces. However, more study has shown that in a usual room, the amount of cleaning houseplants do is very small, because rooms have so much air. A review in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology in 2019 worked out you’d require hundreds of plants in each room to noticeably improve air quality just by the plant filtering it. Houseplants are good for you, offering nice looks, lowering stress, and adding moisture to the air, but you shouldn’t expect them to significantly purify the air.

Key Takeaway

Lots of popular advice for houseplants, like giving orchids ice cubes to drink, spraying them with water for humidity, putting pebbles in the bottom of pots to improve drainage, chatting with them, thinking brown leaf tips are caused by dry air, re-potting every year, and believing they’ll significantly clean the air around you, don’t really work or come from a misunderstanding of what is actually going on. If you swap these old wives’ tales for methods that are supported by research – using water at room temperature, a humidifier for plants that like the tropics, a potting mix that drains well, finding out exactly what’s wrong with your plant when something goes wrong, and only re-potting when the plant actually needs it – your plants will do much better and you won’t be wasting your time.

Lots of people who have houseplants get really worried about leaving them when they go on holiday for a week or two. This is especially true if you have lots of plants, and many of them are tropical ones that need a lot of water. The idea of coming back to plants that are all drooping, brittle, or dead can ruin the fun of your trip. However, if you do a few easy things before you go, most of your houseplants will be fine for a fortnight without you, and will usually be doing better when you get home than you’d probably think.

For Trips of One Week or Less

If your houseplants are in the right size pots and are otherwise healthy, they’ll generally be fine for a week without being watered, as long as you soak them well before you go and don’t leave them in direct sunlight or near anything that gives off heat. Really, really water them the night before you leave. We’re talking water until it runs out of the drainage holes, then wait half an hour and water one more time to get as much water as possible to the roots. Also, take plants that usually sit in south or west windows and put them in a place with plenty of bright, but not direct sunlight, because this will mean they don’t lose water from their leaves so quickly and the soil will stay moist longer. Put all your plants together in one place too, as when they all ‘breathe’ (transpire), they make a little bubble of moisture around each other, and each plant won’t dry out as fast. For most types of houseplant, just a good soaking, lower light and being together will be enough to get through the week with no further attention.

 

For Trips of 10 to 14 Days

If you’re going to be away for over a week, plants that need a lot of water will need some extra water supplied to them. Luckily, there are many cheap ways to do this yourself, and they’ll steadily moisten the soil, without needing any electricity or complicated programming. One way, called the wick method, is to put one end of a cotton string or a strip of capillary matting up into the hole at the bottom of the pot (or into the soil from the top), and have the other end sitting in a container of water that is next to or a little above the plant. Water will then be pulled from the container, through the string or matting, and into the soil at about the same speed as the plant is using it. You should try this for two or three days before you go to be sure the string is giving enough water, but not too much.

You can also get self-watering globes or stakes, which are made of glass or ceramic. You fill these with water and push them into the soil and they will slowly let water out as the soil gets drier. These are easy to find, don’t cost much, and will give your plants a few extra days between waterings. And for bigger plants, or lots of little pots, you can put them on top of a layer of wet capillary matting inside a waterproof tray. The plants will then soak up water through the holes in their pots as the soil around their roots becomes dry. This is a simple way of watering from the bottom and can keep plants going for a fortnight or even longer depending on how big the tray is and how much water is in it.

For Extended Trips (Three Weeks or More)

If you’re going to be away for more than a fortnight, your plants will likely need someone you trust to look at them weekly, or a way to water them automatically. You can get easy-to-use drip watering systems for inside plants for between twenty and forty dollars, and these hook up to the tap or a water container, slowly releasing a set amount of water at times you choose on a timer. They work well, you can use them again and again, and you won’t have to rely on locating a friend or neighbour who is good with plants. If you’d rather not buy anything for this, another good option is to take all of your plants to a friend you trust and give them short, written instructions on how to look after them, so they get the care they require whilst you are gone.

 

What Not to Do Before Leaving

Surprisingly, two things people often do to help plants before going on vacation can actually hurt them. Firstly, giving plants a lot of fertilizer right as you leave builds up salt in the soil and stresses the plant. Then, since you won’t be around to water normally, this salt can’t be rinsed away. And secondly, putting tropical plants in plastic bags to keep moisture in, which you might have heard of, is risky. If sunlight touches the bag, it gets too hot inside, and the plant can overheat and run out of air, and it happens very quickly. It’s better to forget the fertilizer and plastic. Water the plants very well, move them to a place with less light, put them together in a bunch, or use something to draw water up to them from a reservoir. Those are the things that will work best.

Key Takeaway

If you really soak your houseplants, put them in fairly bright but not direct sunlight, and cluster them together (they like each other’s humidity!) most of them will be fine for about a week while you’re away. For ten to fourteen days gone, you’ll need to get some extra water to them somehow – think cotton strips leading to the water, those glass self-watering bulbs, or a tray with a mat that draws water up to the roots. If you are going to be away for longer than two weeks, a friend you trust to pop in weekly or a system to slowly drip water is a good idea. And to prevent the things that ruin plants when you’re on vacation, don’t fertilize before you go and don’t cover them in plastic bags.