The Biggest Change You Can Make This Winter To Help Your Tropical Houseplants Thrive

During winter, when it's bleak and cold outside, you're likely to keep the windows closed and have the heating on full-time. While your houseplants will love the extra warmth, there's one thing they're not going to enjoy. You see, heating your home often means the air will be quite dry, and many of the indoor plants you like to grow will suffer because they need moist air to thrive. So the biggest change you can make in winter to keep your tropical plants happy is to increase the humidity around them. To help with this, you might want to find out what a hygrometer is and how investing in one can help. 

Many plants that are able to live indoors hail from the tropics and often grow in lush rainforests as part of the understory, although you will find a range of houseplants that thrive in dry climates, like some cacti and succulents. If you've ever stepped deep inside a tropical rainforest, you'll understand that the air is heavy with moisture and the plants that live there absolutely adore all that extra humidity. That's because rainforests get a lot of rain, around 80 to 120 inches every year for those in South America. 

This means the humidity levels in these ecosystems can fall between 77% and 88%, depending on the season. However, when you bring tropical plants into your home, you're exposing them to a completely different environment, so they might struggle until they've had a chance to settle in.

When it's cold, you'll find the outdoor air is much drier than it would be throughout the warmer months. Of course, this means that the air inside is also quite dry, and when you add heating to the mix, you may end up with relative humidity levels as low as 30% or less. This drier air is not all that good for you and definitely won't benefit your tropical indoor plants. That's why you're likely to experience problems with dry skin, and your plants will have similar issues because their leaves will dry out much like your dermis. The ideal indoor relative humidity level should be 30% to 60% to create a healthy environment for both you and your plants.

As you might know, plants transpire or lose water through the stomata, tiny pores in their leaves. However, in dry environments, they will lose more water from their leaves than they would if there's plenty of moisture in the air, because of the moisture gradient. Therefore, increasing the moisture around your plants is especially important in winter, and this is why you may want to explore how to raise the humidity in your home so your favorite house plants can thrive.