Bringing in Houseplants With out Bringing in Issues – Halton area Grasp Gardeners

Cathy Kavassalis – Halton Grasp Gardener

August 28, 2025

This delicate fall climate is ideal for understanding within the backyard—and an excellent time to organize houseplants for his or her transfer indoors. Many gardeners need to overwinter tender vegetation inside, however together with them we are able to simply usher in undesirable pests and illness. With a little bit of preparation, you may decrease potential issues and assist your vegetation thrive indoors all winter.

Step 1: Examine and Clear

Chances are you’ll need to convey vegetation indoors for the winter. Sadly, we are able to simply convey pests and illness inside with these vegetation. There are some issues you are able to do to scale back the potential issues.

Examine the pots and vegetation rigorously for pests or illness.
Prune out useless or diseased stems.
Wash the plant with water or an insecticidal cleaning soap answer. (Some vegetation are delicate to soaps, so take a look at a leaf in case you are unsure.).There are lots of merchandise out there by retailer
Elevate the plant out of the pot to look at roots and search for exercise within the soil. If bugs are current, rinse roots and/or soak in an insecticidal cleaning soap answer.
If reusing pots, wash them completely and think about using a dilute bleach answer earlier than repotting.
Use sterile soil applicable in your plant species.
Water effectively and convey inside.

(Look ahead to pest and illness outbreaks within the coming months. The earlier you catch them, the better they’re to handle.)

Step 2: Collect Your Instruments

Get an enormous tub/container, insecticidal cleaning soap, pruners, soil, gloves, a root knife, and many others.

Step 3: My Course of with Two Houseplants

As we speak, I selected to wash up a Boston fern (Nephrolepsis exaltata ‘Bostoniensis’) and a variegated By no means By no means plant (Ctenanthe lubbersiana) to convey inside. I took some footage as an example the method.

I cleaned the soil from the roots and dunked the foliage in a shower.

Elevate your plant out of the pot …Hmm there are critters in there.

Clear your pot rigorously.

Rinse, prune, and re-pot.

Each my vegetation had many bugs, slugs, and spiders. So I ready an enormous tub of water and added a tablespoon of concentrated insecticidal cleaning soap (a few 1% answer is desired). Use solely plant-safe soaps, in accordance with instructions.

Safer’s Insecticidal Cleaning soap is one product out there to be used in Canada. All the time select ready merchandise as they’re ready safely to the appropriate focus for use with vegetation. See The **Grime on Cleaning soap**

As a result of my vegetation had been giant, I couldn’t submerse them all of sudden, however wanted to soak the tops after which the roots. As I appeared on the soil of the fern, I noticed that it was filled with woodlice (e.g. tablet bugs) and numerous different attention-grabbing little critters. So I wanted to rigorously wash the roots.

I used a powerful spray from my hose to take away many of the present soil and critters earlier than dipping the plant again into my cleaning soap tub. A number of extra little bugs floated up.

After a couple of minutes of soaking, I rinsed the vegetation completely and repotted with a tropical soil mix. Bear in mind to pick out the appropriate soil in your vegetation. Tamp down the soil and water effectively.

Executed for the day.

Step 4: Hold Watching

Even after cautious cleansing, proceed to observe houseplants by the winter. Catching pest or illness issues early makes them a lot simpler to handle.