Houseplant Vacations
This summer, send your houseplants on a tour of the great outdoors. They'll return home at the end of summer lush and green and rejuvenated. To ensure your houseplants the perfect outdoor season, keep these tips in mind.
Before moving your houseplants outdoors for the summer, take each plant outside briefly on a sunny day just to check for signs of pests. Strong sunlight makes it easier to spot signs of pests such as mealybugs, aphids, scale and spider mites. Use appropriate control measures to get your plants in good shape before summer begins.
Check each plant to make sure it is not pot-bound. Simply slide a blunt table knife around the inside edge of the pot. If the roots have reached the edge of the pot, you will feel a slight resistance in the knife, and you will be able to tap the pot lightly and then lift the plant from the pot in one piece with roots intact. Repot overgrown plants in a larger pot.
Most foliage houseplants are related to wild understory plants-- plants that thrive in the dappled light shade of other, taller, wild plants. They flourish in an outdoor location that allows them plenty of diffused, indirect light. Avoid south-facing, exposed locations except for those plants that have high light requirements, such as hibiscus, geraniums, oleanders, cacti, and other succulents.
Water outdoor plants daily; because summer heat drives moisture out of clay pots and causes rapid dehydration of soil, keep a saucer full of water under clay pots to insure adequate water. You can also prevent clay pots from overheating by burying them up to the rim in your garden.
In order to keep slugs, pill bugs, and other pests out of a buried pot, slip a nylon stocking over the bottom of each pot. You can then sink the pot into the ground without fear of intruders entering through the bottom drainage hole. Also, this simple trick prevents plant roots from growing through the drainage hole into the ground over the summer.
Every other week, feed houseplants with fish emulsion or manure tea. The warmth and light outdoors encourages rapid growth, which you can support with your biweekly feedings.
To avoid bringing outdoor pests into your house, check each plant for insects before you bring it in.
Bring plants back to their indoor spots before the arrival of fall has forced them to adapt to cooler temperatures. Plants exposed to the cool outdoor temperatures of fall (even 55 degrees to 60 degrees F) may experience shock and decline when they are brought into the warm house.
(Source: Rodale's Good Times Almanac)