As the weather gets cooler and your plants stop growing, it’s easy to feel disheartened. But rather than packing away our watering cans and shears and hibernating over the winter months, we have some useful tips to get the most out of your hobby when it seems too chilly to try!

1. Cultivating summer dormant/winter active plants

Did you know that some plants, especially succulent varieties, are more active in the winter than the summer? Examples of these include: aloe, senecio, crassula, and haworthia. These guys tend to avoid too much growing in the summer as the high heat makes them dry out too quickly while trying to produce energy. Include a few of these in your plant collection so have something fun to look forward to while everything else has slowed up. 

One of our personal favourite’s is conophytum, which forms a dark brown crust in the summer but pops through it in a very satisfying way as the weather begins to cool.

2. Forget knitting winter woollies, try winter sowing

Some plants need their seeds sown in the wintertime for them to get going in the Spring. If you’ve never had a go at growing your own vegetables before, consider this the best time to get started on an array of edible plants!

Kale, lettuce, watercress, broccoli, radish, snow peas, garlic, carrots, strawberries, and many more are perfect for planting in the wintertime. We also have seed packets available in-store!

3. Spring clean? What about a winter tidy?

With your plant’s growth slowing and fewer pests present, now may be a fantastic time to get to tidying up your plants.

Prune back overgrown plants for a strong return in the Spring, clear out all those dead leaves, and give everything a nice shine with some white oil (available in-store!) to protect them as the weather starts to warm up again.