Earlier this year, I showed you how I had made a Summer Shade Container Planter for my back porch that was almost exclusively made out of houseplants rather than typical garden plants.
No geraniums, no petunias, no verbena. None of the normal summer annuals.
Part of the joy of the planter was that after summer was over, you could move the houseplants inside the house to join your other indoor plant babies. It's almost like getting free houseplants!
So now that the weather has changed and it's been getting close to freezing at night, I have brought the houseplants inside my warm, cozy home.
Moving Plants Indoors
But bringing them in after a summer outside can be a little tricky if you want to avoid pests, transplant shock, and messy cleanup. These are the steps I followed to keep my plants healthy, happy, and ready to thrive all winter long.
As a reminder, this is how the plants looked this summer when I first planted them.
About 6 weeks later.
And this is how the planter looked in early September when it was at peak growth.
Why, yes. It is a little overgrown. It's not like being overgrown is a bad thing, though!
Separating Your Plants
So, in late October, I gently coaxed each plant out of the planter with a little spade, trying to take as much of the root ball with each plant as possible.
Amazingly, the roots weren't as intertwined as I had suspected they might have been.
I probably could have shown a photo of me digging them out with the spade, but I couldn't hold the camera and work a spade at the same time.
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Repotting The Individual Plants
So now that I had separate plants once again, I just simply repotted each of them in their own pot. I gave each plant lots of fresh potting soil so it would have a good start in its new home.
The Original Plants in this pot were:
- Begonia 'Gryphon'
- Coleus - Burgundy Wedding Train
- Coleus - Pineapple Beauty
- Hypoestes Phyllostachya (aka polka dot plant) - Splash Select Pink
- Hypoestes Phyllostachya (aka polka dot plant) - Splash Select White
- Variegated Swedish Ivy (Candlevine Plectranthus)
- SunPatiens® Compact Hot Pick
- Fern (small Boston fern I believe?)
- Wandering Dude aka Wandering Jew (Tradescantia Zebrina)
The two coleus did not make the cut to come inside. They were both VERY overgrown and leggy and I honestly just didn't have enough room in the house for them. I ended up listing them for free on a local facebook page and someone snapped them up. I waved goodbye to them and wished them a happy life.
If you are interested in learning how to bring them inside for winter and grow them as houseplants, Epic Gardening has an excellent article on how to winterize coleus.
Look For Pests And Diseases
So, with the two coleus gone, my next step was addressing any potential bugs the plants may have picked up outside. I did not want to bring anything into the house that would be a problem for my other houseplants that live inside year-round and count on me to protect, pamper, and feed them.
First, I looked over the plants and checked the undersides of the leaves and saw no sign of any bug problems, but I sprayed my babies with neem oil as an added precaution. Again, I did not want to bring any pests, no matter how cute they might be, inside the house.
OK, so I might also not have trusted my over 50-year-old eyes to spot any teeny tiny bugs.
I use a store-bought pre-mixed neem oil spray from Bio-Advanced, but feel free to mix up your own spray if you prefer. Neem oil is organic and will kill common garden pests (aphids, beetles, and mites). It also works as a fungicide by controlling powdery mildew, rust, etc.
Short Stay In The Garage To Acclimate
After spraying with the neem oil spray, I moved the plants into the garage for 4-5 days so they could acclimate a little better to indoor temperatures.
I didn't want them going from 50-degree days outside to 76-degree days inside all at once. So, the garage gave them a chance to adjust slowly.
Do not leave the plants in the garage for longer than 4-5 days though. They do need sunlight, after all.
Enjoy Your Indoor Houseplants
After the 4-5 days they can graduate to indoor living and be mixed in with your other houseplants.
BTW, I've been using my vintage porcelain enamel kitchen table with the Singer sewing machine base as a plant stand lately. The porcelain top makes it super easy to keep clean and I don't need to worry about water leaving rings on one of my wooden tables.
A Note About The Begonia
The Begonia Gryphon (tall plant to the right on the floor) is a tuberous begonia (the foliage grows from a potato-like thing called a tuber planted under the soil).
Although the plant still looks fine right now, tuberous begonias will eventually lose their leaves and go into dormancy over the winter, so they're not the prettiest plant to look at in the wintertime.
It will probably last until December as a nice-looking plant before it needs to go to bed for the winter.
I will then remove the plant from the pot, knock the dirt off the tuber, and store it in peat moss until next spring, when it can be planted again. And it should come back even bigger and better next year.
Do you take your houseplants outside for the summer and then bring them back inside for winter?
Jan Dean
Looks great! That spray takes care of those little gnats that come out of the dirt? I always have that problem and put apple cider vinegar in a bowl next to the plant. Lovely smell - nasty. So I stopped bringing plants inside. Thanks!