PREPARING HOUSEPLANTS TO COME BACK INDOORS

Nature is changing the season with cooler air, bluer skies and warm, but not hot, sunshine. This is ideal gardening time after a wonderful summer with adequate rainfall.

House plants that have spent the summer vacation hanging on the porch or patio, dressing up gardens or even planted in the soil like any permanent feature of the landscape, need to come inside for the winter. Gardeners needs to do some work on them to make their transition easier.

Repotting of some is essential. Summer days cause vigorous growth and potted plants are more likely to become root bound.

Certain insects, such as mealy bugs, earthworms, red spiders, ants and centipedes like to set up house-keeping in plants pot outside for the summer.

Pots should be cleaned off before coming back inside. The soil must be changed. Even if a plant is only outside for a short time it can become contaminated and the soil can hide a lot of little bugs. Pots left inside also should be cleaned and soil changed.

To repot the plant simply turn the pot upside down, supporting the plant at the base of the stems, knock the pot a little and gently pull. If the ball of soil is mostly roots, the plant is root bound. Shake and spread the roots a bit to give the individual roots more room. Trim the roots although this may hurt you a bit but remember you are also helping the plant by stimulating growth.

Choose a pot not more than one size larger than the container the plant was in previously. The best soils for repotting are the soil less prepared growing media or any planting mix. Besides reducing stock, these mixes are the best growing soils your plant can have. Never, never dig garden soil for planting. Outdoor soil belongs in your garden, not in your pots for indoor growth.

It is always difficult to decide which plants to save. It is becoming more and more difficult since there is no longer a Southeast Missouri Hospital Flea Market. This is where the overflow went because only so many plants can come into their winter home.

Plants that require cooler than normal temperatures and shade outdoors, such as coleus, impatiens and begonias, require a bright window indoors or they become leggy and flower poorly. Our indoors is higher in temperature and lower in humidity than outside and most outside flowers are unhappy.

To save or not save geraniums is always an annual question. They often do not do well inside unless there is a southern or very sunny window. Some gardeners keep geraniums in a cool room where they receive lots of sunshine. They often prune them back, water sparingly and just keep the growing until next spring, then put them out, water and fertilize and watch them take off. The bare-rooted, paper sack method works well for some who have a cool, unheated area of their basement to store them. Here a few are brought into the garden room and they will bloom in the spring.

Christmas cactus need to be left outside as long as possible, often until frost or until it is predicted. They are forming buds when temperatures are in the 40's. My favorite-brother-Carl and his wife had one in full bloom this past weekend. It has been outside all summer. A noted horticulturist on the radio said that he has had Christmas cactus to bloom as many as five times each year, when they are properly watered and fertilized.

Cacti and other succulents, such as jade plants and sedums, do best in a sunny south or west window during wintertime.

For your in-ground plants the same procedure as repotting applies, though being pot less, other concerns arise. When digging up plants, such as impatiens, geraniums, coleus and begonias, take care not to sever too many out stretching roots.

Clay potted plants help add humidity to the air, for their is continuous evaporation of water through the porous pot walls providing health giving moisture to the area around the plants. Setting plants on a pebbled filled tray so the bases of their clay pots nest much needed humidity to the dry inside air.

Plants summered outdoors receive less of a shock if moved inside before indoor heating starts. When house plants vacation outdoors for several months they often lose some foliage when brought back indoors. Anything that softens the transition will minimize the shock.

It is travel time for plants, bringing them back inside for the long winter ahead. Good Luck!