Gardening Tips: Looking After Plants In Spring

Gardening

oi-Staff

By Deepa Ranganathan

Thursday, January 30, 2014, 17:53 [IST]

Spring, the growing season, is when you need to care for your plants the most. Caring for houseplants becomes an absolute necessity especially after having arrested them for months during the winters. You need to keep them in the open, make them feel the sun’s rays and adapt to the new environment so that they can grow well. Looking after house plants can be a lot of work but, in reality, caring for them is absolutely easy. It involves no major time investment, if truth be told.

House plants need care, well-lit atmosphere and, if possible, a good base temperature and a place with high humidity. All these needs are taken care of during the spring time. No wonder this is the best time for these plants and their growth. You would find them flowering and happy during this season.

TOP 10 GARDEN PLANTS

Firstly, they have been inside for way too long since it was happy winters for you. So, get them ready for spring before making them grow. The first step in looking after your plants with onset of spring is dusting them. Remember, the light of sun will help them photosynthesize but how can dirty plants do that? So, clean it first as spring has sprung up.

Clean your Plants

It’s important to clean your plants before spring sets in. Dirty leaves can’t photosynthesize and hence can’t produce the food. Give them a slight shower using a sprinkler in an attempt to clean them. This process would also remove the insects from their bodies. A simple spring gardening tip is to tie a plastic bag to your plant's base, to prevent it plant from getting over watered. This works best for your plants.

Cut Down Mineral Build-up

Despite having watered the plants, do they appear dull? There's more you can do to look after your house plants in spring. The minerals in the water could be responsible for this happening. Rub the plants using a dry cloth to remove the minerals. You can even scrap off the minerals with your thumb. Just make sure you are not too hard on the plants. Clean the mineral off the pots too as they too can prove to be harmful to your plants

Sunlight

Once you have given the plants shower, let them dry. Keep them in a shaded place and allow them to dry there. Direct contact with sun can cause burning of these leaves. So, till they are not dry let them not return near the sun. Once dry, keep them on the window sill but, ensure the sill’s clean.

Feeding The Plant

Here's an important spring gardening tip. There are house plants that don’t need feeding and then there are the flowering plants which need to be fed regularly. Give them liquid feeds regularly. If you are planning to move the plants to bigger pots, add some granules of fertilizer. Don’t over-feed the plant in anyway

Pruning & Cleaning

Looking after houseplants includes this greatly. Pruning simply means removing the unwanted flowers and leaves from the plant. You can remove damaged or yellowing leaves using your thumb. Wayward branches should also be removed. Regularly clean your plants using cotton so that they remain dust free. Remember keeping them out in the sunlight can make them dirty due to the dust in the surroundings.

Trim Regularly

As mentioned spring is the season of growing for the plants. So make sure you trim the plants regularly so that they grow healthily. Do not forget this spring gardening tip – remove weeds, maverick shoots and unnecessary growths observed in the plant. Apply fertilisers regularly. Make sure the fertilisers you use are acidic soluble ones so that they don’t harm the plants much.

If the sunlight is too much, keep the houseplants a little shaded such that they get enough light but are not burnt in the process.