Humidity
When you first bring your house plant home, you will be bringing them from a lovely warm, humid greenhouse. Most homes aren’t anywhere as near humid, especially in winter. Because of this it’s worth spending some time to understand humidity and how it effects plants.
Let’s get technical, house plants mostly need between 40% and 60% humidity, anything outside this range can be detrimental to the plant’s health. Plants will develop brown edges on their leaves, they start to wilt, and flowers and buds drop off or wither quickly.
As always, check what humidity your plant likes, then place it in an appropriate place in your home. It’s not always ideal to set the humidity of your home to the plants needs, but here are some tips that can help:
- You can use a fine mist spray on your plants to temporarily increase the humidity around the plant.
- Placing plants in groups naturally slightly increases the humidity around the group.
- Place an open container of water near the plants, make it a pretty container.
- If you want to keep the place looking good, you can add a shallow dish with small stones, and set the plants into this. Then add water to the dish so the plants can take what they need through the roots and natural evaporation.
- Be careful not to place the plants in areas of excess humidity such as bathrooms as this can also affect a sensitive plant.
