Will my new tropical plants survive in my greenhouse over winter?
Stefan says: You’ve become interested in gardening and have grown tomatoes, chillies, courgettes and lots of other things. Recently, you bought several tropical plants at a nursery near Durham where you live. You’ve put them in the greenhouse but wonder what else you should do.
Your query begs many different questions, the most important being the minimum temperature in your greenhouse. All greenhouses, and in fact most outdoor gardens, are quite warm enough through summer for tropical plants to live happily, but during winter there are two problems.
First, the minimum temperature must remain pretty high at 12-14C. The second important factor, and the one that you can do nothing about, is light quality.
In a Durham winter, days are short and the light quality is relatively poor, so it’ll be a matter of trial and error to discover which plants can tolerate this.