Dust-downs, window polish and white light: How to ensure your plants grow in the dark
With daylight dwindling, some houseplants may be suffering from lack of light.
Many green and leafy indoor plants come from tropical regions where they grow under the canopy of tall trees. But, despite this shading, they will get some degree of light for 12 hours a day all year round while here, in winter, they are lucky to get six hours at the darkest part of the year.
Add to that the fact that, even on a south-facing windowsill, plants will not receive half of the light they would if they were growing outside and far less than if they are placed in a dark corner of a room, and you can begin to see why they may be suffering.
If the leaves of your variegated plants are falling off or turning plain green then that’s a sign they are not getting as much daylight as they need.
The solution is to move plants to a bright windowsill and you may have to do this in rotation if you’ve got lots of plants, giving them all a turn on the brightest spot.
As a rule, plants such as the Finger
Plant (Philodendron bipinnatifidum) the Bird’s Nest Fern (Asplenium nidus) and the Flamingo Flower (Anthurium scherzeranum), which all grow in tropical regions, cope best with low light levels, while White-scented jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum) and Bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia reginae) are among those plants that need to hog the light if they are to thrive.
The reason why plants in offices don’t suffer from light-deficit, even if they grow at some distance from a window, is that fluorescent lights mimic daylight and there are home options that provide fluorescent tubes with coatings that provide the exact combination of red and white light that plants need in order to grow at their best.
The good news is that it’s only going to keep on getting darker for a few more weeks and then, after that, it will slowly start to get light again. So, in the meantime, you can help things along by wiping dust off the surface of plant leaves as this acts as a filter, stopping daylight from getting through.
You might want to give your windows a polish too, for the same reason and, by pulling up blinds as high as they will go and throwing curtains wide open, you’ll be able to make the most of the light that is available.