It is always hard to keep a healthy plant during the winter time. There are many reasons but we can categorise ultimately three things that make plants weak and even sick and die.
Last time we talked about Low temperature issue.
So I will talk about 2) Less sunshine.
It is not a terrible issue in winter time if you are living on the Mediterranean coast. But not all of us are lucky enough. The sun sets even around 3 pm and doesn't go up until even 10 am in the mid winter especially around December in my region. The weather is also bad in general. Very wet and cloudy 4 to 5 days per week, or even totally no sunshine for a few weeks.
Simple solutions
A) Keep the plants on the south side. It is a huge difference that you put your plants at the south side of your house, or north side. The sun won't go high enough during the mid winter, that keeps your plants in shadow whole days if it was north wall side, or north window side. If you are a researcher type person, please buy two similar height plants and put them on the north window side and south window side. After a month, you will see a huge difference between these plants!
B) Add the lighting close to the plants during the winter time. I did not care much about lighting before but learned from sad experiences. I had my favorite plants called Baby Toe which were blooming every year. I had a small stand light on the windowside and the plants were very close to the light. I just wanted to have more space for those plants and move it to the west side. Then... it became so weak and melted away a few months later!!! I didn't know that even a small lump is doing a marvelous job to the healthy growth of those plants.
C) Add plant lighting equipment. I installed it last year, and everything changed dramatically!!! I was thinking it is only for professional people, but actually it should be for anybody who loves plants. I always lose some plants during the winter, or even if I didn't lose them, it takes so much time to recover to the healthy status in Spring and summer. But after the installation of very basic plant light, all of my plants are so happy, like dazzling in the warm sunshine anytime even if it was snowing outside.
With the help of these equipment, I am having a happy winter these days.
There are so many varieties of plant lights and I am using LED Grow Light Full Spectrum for example. The light form MIVARRS doesn't need stand space as they have a clip. I am using this four heads light inserting to each level of plant shelves. It is sometimes difficult to bring in the light to the bottom shelf, but now all the space has become an ideal spot for my plants!
Another one is Phlizon 1200W LED Plant Grow Light, which is professional level quality. I am using this for caudex and some rare plants from mild climates. Succulents become beautiful and colourful by enough sunlight, and this one gives perfect colour to them all season together with super fast growth.
So our next theme is about 3) Too wet conditions .
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