Answering Questions
Jennifer from Offbeat Homes raised a really good question about the technique I shared to help acclimate your outdoor plants to an inside environment for winter. She wasn’t the only one! So I thought I would clarify. She asked if putting plastic bags over the plants would harm or kill them. Actually I thought the same thing when I first heard about this trick. I thought it would smother my plants! But surprisingly it did absolutely nothing to my plants. Don’t ever put plastic over your plants outside! The variations in temperature and more direct light will do serious damage. That is the major difference between doing this indoors. Just make sure you water them well before you do this. The humidity and condensation kept me from having to water quite so much at first, and as long as you don’t put it directly in front of the window, it won’t fry. That’s why you don’t move it to it’s permanent place until you start poking holes. I’m not sure if there are plants you shouldn’t do this for. I do this for all my plants that winter inside, and that’s quite a variety. If you’re really worried you can shorten the time before you start poking holes!
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Uncategorized
2 opinions for Answering Questions
Jennifer
Oct 10, 2007 at 1:52 pm
That’s interesting and makes it seem way more like it would work. It makes sense that that sudden change could be worse for plants. I have indeed brought plants in and had them die on me. Next time I’ll give this a try. I realized that most of the plants I was thinking about this being bad for I keep inside all the time so it actually wouldn’t matter (violets, some fuzzy furn I don’t know the name of).
Thanks for following up though. This tied it all up.
Rebecca
Oct 10, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I’ve never done this for African Violet. I probably wouldn’t though. Even though they like humidity, they don’t like water on their leaves! Send me a pic of your fern, I’ll see if I can figure it out!
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: