We're being suckered by a stretch of balmy weather in Chicago right now. Temperatures in the 70s, flirting with 80s, are predicted for the next several days, until about Tuesday, it looks like, with nothing but sunshine. For those of us who move our houseplants outdoors for the summer, this sort of weather in October is really dangerous. The temptation is to leave the plants out to enjoy the warmth and sunshine as long as possible, but that's a major risk: At any moment the weather could turn and overnight we could have a houseplant massacre. After all, our typical average first-frost date is about Oct. 15.
I have gotten about halfway there: I have the houseplants repotted (yes, I know it's better to do it in spring, but for logistical reasons I always end up doing it in September) and waiting on the back porch landing. I haven't been able to bring myself to haul them indoors -- it seems so cruel. Also, indoors is three floors up, and hauling pots upstairs is work.
I don't have any exotic orchids in my collection, any signed-first-edition houseplants. My houseplants are more along the lines of the battered paperbacks you pick up from the freebie box outside used bookstores. Most were grown from cuttings from other people's houseplants; some, despite their plebeian geneaology, are precious to me because the cuttings came from people I loved.
But even common-as-dirt houseplants like mine -- spider plants, pothos, Tradescantia zebrina (the plant otherwise known as wandering racial slur), purple heart vine, athyrium, peperomia, Moses-in-the-cradle, Chinese evergreens, begonias, jade plant, Ficus benjamina, asparagus ferns, snake plant (a.k.a. mother-in-law's tongue), a couple of kinds of true ferns, prayer plant, a few others I can't bring to mind right now -- are mostly of tropical or subtropical origins. I'm trying to overwinter some coleus and tuberous and flowering begonias this year too, to save money on annuals next spring.
The majority of these plants are native to the shady understory of tropical forests. That's why they can tolerate the darkness and warmth of living rooms. They have no defenses against a Chicago frost, and even the nighttime temperatures we've often had so far, in the 50s and occasionally 40s, are probably stressing them.
Repotting and dividing houseplants in fall is another stressor, although my plants love it outdoors and many grow to lanky or unmanageable proportions. Houseplants do go dormant, although it's a more subtle dormancy than you see in, for instance, a sugar maple that abandons its leaves to hunker down or a hosta that lets its top growth wither to preserve its roots. Houseplants just slow their growth in the autumn and rev up again in spring. Dividing and transplanting them in fall, when they are trying to start taking it easy, and forcing them to grow new roots when they're getting sleepy is a challenge. I'm glad they get a few extra days in the sun, and I've given them a mild shot of fish emulsion (another reason to leave them in the open air until the perfume passes).
When I repotted them and divided them, I checked the plants carefully for bugs, especially the undersides of the leaves, where lurkers often lurk. I gave them a hard shower from the hose to wash off any tiny insects or eggs. I watered them good, but I'm letting them dry out well before I water them again to avoid the saturated soil that leads to fungus gnat problems.
Some leaves were a little tattered from being munched on during the summer. All my houseplants serve as somebody's food supply outdoors, and they end up with holes and raggedy leaf edges. I simply cut any unsightly leaves off. Outdoors is actually the healthiest place for plants, pest-wise; whatever insects may munch on them become food for a wide variety of carnivorous insects, and the plants rarely sustain significant damage. Indoors is far riskier because there are no predators to control the populations of plant-munchers. That's why I try to be really careful to check for insects before I bring them in.
In an ideal world I would have a place to quarantine houseplants that have been outdoors for a few weeks to make sure they aren't bringing in pests. Also in an ideal world, I would gradually bring them in for a few hours each day to acclimate them to the much harsher conditions they will have to survive indoors -- far less light, for example, even in my sunniest windows (outdoors there is no roof). But I am not going to haul 25 plants up and down three flights of stairs each day. So my plants are just going to have to tough out the shock. Usually the ficus loses a lot of leaves before it recovers, but a ficus will lose leaves if you give it a hard look.
This rugged treatment explains why I only bother with common, sturdy houseplants. I don't have the conditions or the temperament to baby anything.
I do hedge my bets: Every fall I repot the divisions and give them to friends and family. That way I can go back and beg a cutting if something goes wrong with my mother plant (had a begonia near-death experience last winter). I also have a steady supply of backup cuttings in glasses of water on the windowsill. Over the years the old pool of friends and family has become largely saturated with spider plants, pothos and prayer plants, so I've had to make some new friends to soak up the annual surplus. Worse things could happen.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
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