Fresh Air and Sunlight for Indoor Plants

Just about any plant can be grow indoors, provide certain conditions are met, for the general good health of the plant. Adequate supply of fresh air, proper sunlight, water and nutrients such as plant food, or fertilizer.

Let us deal with fresh air and sunlight:

Adequate supply of fresh air

Well, this is mainly in regard to where the plant is situated in your indoor geography. By this I mean, putting house-plants in situations where they will get covered in crap is not a good idea. Dust, sawdust, fluff, none of which are good situations as a plant must be able to breath and dust, etc, will block the pores on the leaves. Likewise, places like the laundry are not so flash, either. The reason being that although many plants will enjoy some humidity, areas like the laundry tend to be a bit overmuch. Also, your indoor plants will not fair too well sitting on top of a heater, they will literally boil. Nor for that matter too close to a heater say, in the lounge room – this will dry-out a plant at a surprising speed. It may sound very much like common sense to not do these things, but I mention them because I have seen it happen.
House plants, the same as plants outside, benefit greatly from actually being outside, in the fresh air. For house plants, a bit of a breeze can blow away any dust that has gathered on the leaves, but more importantly – is the action of wind.
Wind, or a breeze, as it gently pushes a plant, strengthens the branches and main stem by stretching the cells. Sort of like a bit of aerobics, if you like.

Sunlight

Sunlight is not just a needful thing for plants, it is essential – this is largely how they feed. This is the process of photosynthesis – converting water and nutient into an assimilable resource through the addition of sunlight.
A plant will, doubtless you have noticed, follow, or face the sun throughout the day, this is to afford it the maximum opportunity to manufacture food, with the assistance of the sun.

So, in order for plants to be able to “feed” they must have access to sunlight, for at least a few hours per day. Now, Listen!: If this is an indoor, or house plant that has not previously received any direct sunlight, because you have only just now learned about the importance of sunlight – DO NOT grab your plants and fling them out into the full sun, because they will die. They will burn, turn up their toes, and die. A plant that has not experienced a reasonable amount of direct sunlight, as in sun actually on it’s leaves – not merely bright reflected light, will need to be coaxed back into the full sun, by a series of short visits, slowly building up to longer exposure, over a period of weeks. Here’s a good example for you: have you ever bought some seedlings, or plants, from inside a supermarket? All those flourescent lights make the plants look really good, big floppy leaves an’ all. Then you plant them in your garden – and they all keel over?

There were a number of problems with these plants BEFORE you bought them. Being inside under flouro’s, has made them weak, for starters. A flourescent tube light, is not sunlight, nor even close to it. Add to this the fact that the plant may well have been there for months, poor thing. Just to add insult to injury, you can guarantee that some teenager has been put in charge of the plants – they never had a chance.

But I digress

there are a couple of choices to be made about the house plants you have, and their sunlight requirements;
you can take your plants outside each day, or, rather, once a week – this can be a lot of work and a real pain in the neck, literally. Let us not forget, also, that these plants must already be accustomed to receiving direct sunlight.  Alternatively, you can rotate the plants, where they are: by this I mean that, each day, or couple of days, you give the pot a quarter turn – in the opposite direction they are leaning towards, the reason for this is that if you keep turning in the same direction the plants are leaning – they will start to hang lower and lower in the pot, until such time, and fairly quickly, they stay that way.

As you can see from this article, it is always good to incorporate some fresh air and sunlight for indoor plants.