Houseplants in Waiting

October 25th, 2016

I was reading an article the other day that mentioned how houseplants are “out” – not very trendy and apparently not something many people want to mess around with these days.

Houseplants aren’t all plain-Jane green. Check out this Rex begonia.

I can understand that, especially if your view of a houseplant is a boring bushy-green Chinese evergreen or one of those cheapo bargain-store peace lilies like Aunt Sally was growing 40 years ago.

Growing houseplants also takes some effort and know-how. A lot of people kill them from over-watering or from shoving them in a dark corner and ignoring them for months.

Others don’t like the idea of potential molds and allergens from pots of damp organic matter in the living room. And no one likes the fungus gnats that houseplant-growing often breeds.

But (you knew a but was coming) houseplant gardening can be something more than a feeble side show designed to keep gardeners from going stir crazy for 5 months in winter.

For one thing, garden centers offer many more colorful and interesting choices than the plain-Jane offerings of even a generation ago.

The pincushion plant gets little orange fruits.

Check out some of the beautiful foliage on Rex begonias, for example, or the glossy, black, succulent leaves of ‘Zwartkop’ aeonium, or the little orange fruits on a pincushion plant (Nertera).

Better yet, houseplant gardening can be a way to overwinter and give double-duty status to a wide range of tropicals and annuals.

Instead of buying new outdoor-pot centerpiece plants each spring, I repot some of my centerpieces and move them inside for winter. This works nicely with parlor and kentia palms, rubber plants, spiky cordylines and dracaenas, and even dark-leafed elephant ears.

It also works with a lot of other tender plants that can be used not only in outside pots in summer but as in-ground annuals and groundcovers.

Rather than let wandering jew vines die at frost, I grow them on as houseplants in winter, then move them back outside to hanging baskets or under shrubs the following spring – no worse for the wear.

Aluminum plants, moses-in-a-cradle and purple-heart setcreasea all make excellent shady groundcovers in our summers – and are fine with being a “houseplant” in winter.

Persian shield is my favorite in-and-out tropical.

And my favorite tropical that I keep going year after year is Persian shield (Strobilanthes), an eye-grabber that grows 2 feet tall in the ground by late summer and has narrow, shield-shaped leaves of metallic purple and silver.

The moving-in and moving-out of these plants takes some effort twice a year, but it’s saved me a ton of money on buying new annuals and pot plants every spring.

I’m always surprised at how well most species do with this botanical equivalent of snow-birding.

Don’t expect tropicals to flower well (if at all) inside over winter, and the leaves may yellow or even drop. The point is to keep the roots alive. I’ve found that tropicals often regrow a new set of indoor-adapted leaves over winter. Then when given a week to 10 days of gradually getting used to more light and outdoor exposure, they resume growing normally outside all summer.

I usually hose off my tropicals before taking them inside for winter in an effort to get rid of any hitchhiking bugs. Some people use a spray of insecticidal soap or a chemical insecticide.

As for fungus gnats, covering the soil surface with a half-inch to an inch of sand or commercially available Growstone Gnat Nix gets rid of those.

I also typically give the plants a haircut before moving them inside, mainly to save indoor space.

I don’t fertilize over winter (except a little as spring approaches), and I water sparingly since the plants are living almost in hibernation mode.

I’ve even gone away for all of January and come back to find everything alive and unfazed.

The lesson: sometimes plants surprise us and do just as well without our care than with it.

Even if your effort fails, you have nothing to lose but the time trying. The alternative is that all of those tender plants will croak outside at frost anyway.