 Hi my dear friends, I hope that you're doing well and welcome back to Plants and Lucia. I am Lucia and today is getting colder here in Berlin so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to share seven tips that I have to keep my plants happy and healthy during the winter months of the year. Okay, coming up. Number one, water less. In the winter when it comes to water less is more. And what I would recommend is that you always follow the general rules for your plant but I find that most of our plants really like when we let the soil try in between watering. So my best tip for this is to always check the soil. Throughout the year I usually check the soil of my plants every week. So what I do is I usually check the soil with my finger. So I put my finger inside the soil until the second knuckle and once I feel that the soil is drying out or dry then I water. So for example this one is still not dry. So I can water later. I can tell you when I check the soil of my plants in the winter I find that the soil actually takes longer to dry out and consequently I water less. Number two, also related to water try to use water that is at room temperature. We don't want to use water that is really cold because this will shock the roots and we want our plants to be as comfortable as possible. So always use room temperature water. One way that you can make sure that your water is at room temperature is that you let it aside for some time before using it to water your plants. That way you let it warm up a little bit and then you water. And again you can always check the water with your finger and make sure that it is not too cold for your plants. Number three, provide as much light as possible. During the winter months we get less hours of daylight and less sunlight intensity. So we want to make sure that we provide as much light as possible for our plants. The first thing you can do is to clean your windows. I know it sounds like a small action but it really makes a difference. The dust on our window is actually a barrier for the light to come in. So clean windows will mean more sunlight for our plants. Another thing that you can do is to clean the leaves of your plants. This works the same as to cleaning the windows because we won't have dust on the leaves to block the sunlight. Also cleaning the leaves of our plants will prevent pests which tend to be a bigger problem during the winter months. Another thing you can do to increase the sunlight that you provide to your plants is to move high light loving plants closer to the windows. Especially south facing windows and west facing windows. Remember your house is going to get less sunlight during this month so by moving your plants closer to the window the sunlight intensity will be stronger and your plants will be happier. You can also try to rotate your plants the ones that are okay with it of course. Some plants don't like to be moved so you can just leave them like they are. For example the fiddle leaf fig tree but the plants are okay with being moved I would recommend that you rotate them. This will help your plant get a more even growth. So for example this android plant right here as you can see is growing towards the sunlight. So I need to rotate it a little bit so it can get sunlight from other angles. And what I would recommend is that you rotate your plant every week by about 45 degrees so it's a subtle change. And the last strategy that I can recommend to increase light for your plants is to invest in some grow lights. There are many different kinds of grow lights so it depends on what plant you have and how much light they need. One very useful tip that I learned from Harley G is that we can actually replace the light bulbs in our lamps to LED daylight bulbs. So this will provide your plants with the light that they need and it's a more affordable way. You can also get small LED daylight bulbs for your plants. I got some for our plant wall over here and I think they're very good for my plants so you can also give them a try. Number four increase humidity around your tropical plants. You know during the winter the air in our homes becomes really dry especially if we use heating systems and heating vents. And if you are like me and like lots of tropical plants this is not going to be good for your plants. So it's very important that we increase humidity around them. Some ways that you can help your plants with humidity are for example keeping your plants away from heating vents because the heating vents really create air that is dry. So they will not be happy close to the heating vents. Another way that you can help them with humidity is to put all the tropical plants together. They actually help each other with humidity levels. Now if you have plants that really love high humidity around them I would recommend that you invest in a humidifier for the room where you are going to have your plants. For example we have a humidifier in our bedroom and our plants are really happy. We have calesias there so we keep the humidity at about 55 to 60 percent. You know what let me show you. So here's our humidifier. I really love this one specifically for our calesias because as you can see we have calesias in the bedroom. This is actually my desk. So here it shows you the level of humidity that you're at. So right now we're at 57 percent. I put it to be at 60 so it's still working until it gets to 60. Then over here you can control the mist so it has three levels. You also have the sleep button here which is really great because it actually turns off the light. So then you can have it like this just in case you're sleeping or anything. Or you can also put a timer so you can actually set it up by time. So you can put it for an hour or whatever you would like. It's a really great humidifier so I really recommend it. So if you have any calesias or any high humidity loving plants make sure to check it out. Number five protect your plants from the cold weather. So it goes without saying in the winter the weather gets really cold and we should be able to provide our plants with a warm space so they feel safe and happy. And some ways that we can do this is to first for example seal the windows and doors from cold drafts. Now if you're going to have a window that is going to be opening and closing or a door that is bleeding outside and is going to be opening and closing I would recommend that you put your plant really far away from this window or door so they're not exposed to cold drafts. Another way to protect your plant from the cold weather and this goes a little bit against to the tip that I gave you about putting the plant really close to the window for sunlight you don't want to put your plant really really close to the window because the window is also going to get cold especially if it is snowing outside or really really cold you don't want to put your plant really close to the window touching the glass because this is also cold for them and this is going to be damaging to the leaves. So make sure that your plant is as close as possible to the window for light but not too close so they don't get so cold. Now some plants actually like cooler temperatures in the winter for example I learned from plantarina that the string of pearls likes to be cooler in the winter so what I'm going to do is I'm going to move this plant to my bedroom because this bedroom tends to be cooler than the living room here and I'll see how it goes. Number six cut back on fertilizer so as you may know plants actually don't grow so much over the winter for most of our plants the growing season is between spring and summer and during the colder months your plant gets dormant or they're just not growing so much and because of this they don't need so much fertilizer so I just cut back on fertilization for this month and don't worry we can continue fertilizing in the beginning of the spring. Now some of our plants are actually going to go dormant so they will go a little bit down or they will be not as bright as in the spring or not growing this is totally normal so just keep an eye on them and yeah they should be okay in the spring. Number seven and this is very important check regularly for pests you know with the warmer and drier air in our houses pests can come more easily to our plants so what I do is that I always check my plants every week or so just to make sure and prevent some infestation so I usually check the top of the leaf the back of the leaf sometimes I also check the stems and the soil and keep cleaning the leaves of your plants because this will really help you prevent pests so remember with pests prevention is key okay my friends these are some of the tips that I can give you to keep your plants happy and healthy during the winter. Do you have any other tips or strategies that you use to keep your plants happy during this time of the year? Make sure to comment below so we can all learn together as always if you would like to be part of this community you're always welcome so make sure to subscribe so we can see each other every week and talk about plants and as always I will see you in the next video okay ciao