Summer Care for House Plants

Can you feel that? Things have started to heat up and all these long and warm days mean that summer is here! ☀️

At this point in the year, our house pants begin to really feel the full effects of summer, after experiencing their spring awakening.

This means that once more it is time to switch up your house plant care routine to match!

It can be hard to know exactly what to do when it comes to caring for your plants in summer and it's probably the time of year that you'd rather be out at the beach or relaxing with a book and a glass of wine than looking after your plants.

However it does mean that our plants may become a little more high maintenance than during other seasons. This doesn't mean they are suddenly harder to look after, you'll just need to check on them a little bit more than you usually would.

Feeling stressed already? Never fear! We have pulled together some of our top summer care tips to help your plants stay in tip top shape through out the summer season. 

Watering & Fertilising

Let's start with watering shall we! Switching up your watering routine is in our opinion THE most important change you should make to your care routine.

The summer heat can be REALLY tough on our house plants. With longer, warmer and sunnier days on the cards, they are at a their highest risk of drying out and dehydrating.

• Now is the time to increase the frequency of watering your plants. In saying this, it is important (as much now as ever) to check that your plants are still in need of a water as overwatering can still happen in summer believe it or not!

• It is also advised to regularly check for signs of dehydration. Our plants will often give us obvious signs that they're in need of a good drink such as wrinkly/curled leaves or crispy browning edges. Its ALWAYS a good idea to check the soil too. If you are using Clear Nursery Pots this job is already mostly taken care of! If not there are two ways you can check, the first being to simply lift the plant up! If it feels light, water away! If it still feels fairly heavy, you're probably safe to give watering a skip. The other method is to use your finger & poke it into the pot about 1/4 of the way. If it comes out dry, time to water! Or you could make life even EASIER for yourself and pick yourself up a Grow Probe!

• When you determine your plants ARE in fact ready for a drink, make sure to water them deeply & thoroughly so that all the soil in the pot is wet. Don't be scared to saturate them. As long as you're letting them dry out before re-watering they'll be fine!
• In terms of fertilising, not much needs to be changed! Continuing your normal fertilising routine is perfectly sufficient during summer.

Bonus Tip: Watering your plants in the early morning or the late evening when the sun is at its weakest can help stop the water from evaporating too quickly and to help prevent them from 'boiling'.

Sunlight, Temperature & Humidity 

 Moving on to the second (and third and fourth) most important aspects of plant care in summer which is sunlight, temperature & humidity.

These three go hand in hand with each other, each becoming more extreme at this time of year so it's crucial to make checking these a top priority.

• Moving plants away from/off windowsills that receive direct sunlight is CRUCIAL to ensure that your plants don't burn. Signs of sun burn include yellowing/browning/crisping of leaves. Pop your hand in front of the window, if it is too hot for you, it is WAY too hot for your plants. Don't forget to check all your plants, even plants sitting a good distance away from windows can still be susceptible to burn or overheating. 

• Next up, keeping a fairly even and regular temperature for you plants is also going to help them survive the extremes of summer! Avoid extreme temperature changes or drafts from air conditioning units! This can cause more stress for you plants than being consistently at a higher temperature.  Using a Digital Temperature & Humidity Thermometer can help take the guess work out of this. If you're wanting to lower the temperature a little, try creating a breeze by opening windows or turning on a fan.

• Things can get a little dry during the summer as we increase our use of air conditioning, so increasing the ambient humidity in a room can help to reduce stress in your plants. Using a Sansai Humidifier on a Timer is the easiest & most stress free way to do so!

Keep Plants Clean/Pest Free

Once your plants are well fed, watered & are in the perfect position, you can start monitoring for any pests. The best way to do this is by keeping your plants as clean as possible & establishing a good pest control routine!

• When dust is allowed to gather on leaves, it prohibits them from photosynthesising properly, putting all that bright summer sun to waste! Clean your plants leaves regularly with Plant Buds Leaf Shine & Protect which not only helps to remove the build up of dust & dirt, but the neem oil also acts as a pest deterrent in between pest control doses. Pair it up with a pair of Microfibre Leaf Cleaning Gloves to really help pick up every last speck of dust.

• With the right products, establishing a preventative pest control routine is easy as! If you have recently discovered pests on your plants, start off by giving them all a good spray down with Enspray99 which will kill pests on contact. Make sure to isolate any main offenders whist they are being treated.

• Once you've gained control again, move in with a regular dosing of Groventive which is a systemic pest control. This ensures that if any sneaky unseen pests decide to call your collection home, they're taken care of before they can do any major damage!

Pruning & Re-Potting

Last but definitely not least on the list of summer jobs is to keep your plants well pruned & well potted. This is usually the most enjoyable of all plant care tasks for us plant lovers as we get to see all our hard work paying of!

• Be sure to keep any unruly growth in check by trimming back (with a good pair of Propagation Scissors) and propagating any cut off growth. This can then be re-potted back into the same pot at a later date to make plants more full and lush! You should also tame any runners (like on hoya) using Butterfly Clips or Clamp Clips to keep your plants looking tamed and tidy!

• If your plants are having a growth spurt, consider adding a Plant Support of some kind. A vast majority of our plants are actually climbers by nature, so do require some kind of extra support to help them reach their full potential.

• Summer is still the perfect season to continue any re-potting that needs to be done before the weather gets cooler.  Check on all of the plants that you have yet to re-pot and consider giving them an upgrade so that they can make the most of their desire to grow!  Using Clear Nursery Pots is such a great way to keep an eye on things such as watering, pests and to see whether indeed they're in need of a re-pot without having to continually un-pot your plant.

Bonus Tip: We highly recommend giving your plants a good water/feed with your favourite Plant Food a day or so before re-potting to help prevent stressing out your plant. It's also recommended to re-pot in the early morning or evening to prevent heat stress.

Thank You!

Thank you for making it all the way to the end of this blog post! I hope you learnt something new/found it useful!

Join the conversation by leaving us a comment below on what you think is most important thing to remember about surviving the summer season with house plants!