iamclaudiaq

I’ve never actually consciously participated in home spring cleaning, but I do have a Spring cleaning checklist for my houseplants and I’ll be sharing that with you.

To be completely honest, this checklist isn’t too much different than things I do periodically throughout the year.

The hype

We hear a lot of houseplant advise like “don’t repot in the winter” and I simply don’t subscribe to that. The season lines are really blurred with houseplants because they are adapted to live indoors which is not the environment they would have outdoors in nature. Inside our homes would typically not reach extreme temperatures that would cause a plant to go dormant like they do in the wild.

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Not to say, there aren’t elements that change with seasons in our indoor spaces, like amount of sunlight we get, but overall our indoor plants are adapted and can often skip the dormancy stage.

For example, one of my fiddle leaf fig (in a west facing window), grew the biggest 6 leaves at the end of December. My Peace Lily has not stopped blooming since last July.

So what I mean is, I will always tend to the plant when it needs it regardless of the season.

With that being said, there are some things you can check now as Spring is an optimal time of year to do so.

The checklist

✔️ Shower your plant + give them a good drink– when your plant is ready for its next watering, take it in the shower and give it a good rinse followed by a big drink. I like to water thoroughly until water is coming out of the drainage holes, wait 15 minutes and repeat to ensure it got a good soak. Just ensure you have good drainage.

✔️ Wipe down the leaves– I like to wipe my leaves with a soapy water + peppermint EO mixture. This leaves them so shiny and prevents pests.

✔️ Wipe down your windows to let more light in– No one likes to do this, but we get more sunlight in the Spring so it’s a great time to ensure we are removing all the dust and let it in.

✔️ Check if it needs repotting– check the bottom of the pot, if roots are coming out, it’s time to repot.

✔️ Repot if necessary– Go up 2” in diameter on the new pot so the plant can continue to give you growth instead of wasting all its energy in filling a much larger pot.

✔️ Fertilize– I feed my indoor plants almost every watering. Rule of thumb is, if they are actively growing (new leaves, blooms or branches) you can fertilize. If they did go dormant during winter, then now would be a great time to begin fertilizing to encourage growth.

✔️ Remove any dead leaves or branches– I like to leave yellowing leaves on my plants until the plant drops it on it’s own, but there are two schools of thought here. Do what feels good for you and your plant. Definitely remove any dropped leaves from the pot, or any branches that are dead.

✔️ This is the time to encourage branching + more growth– if you’ve been wanting your plant to branch out, this is a great time to do that! Depending on the plant, you can chop the top, notch or pinch to encourage new branches.