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Time to bring the tropical plants indoors!

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It’s cooled down here in Toronto quite a bit over the last week. In fact, some night’s have started to get close to freezing temperatures.

So, I think I’m going to bring all my tropical plants indoors again. I did put all the tropicals like the passionflower vines, the jasmine, ornamental peppers and so on inside the enclosed back porch a couple of weeks ago. We even put two tomato plants that had been growing in large pots inside the porch too.

The plants have all done well in there and the tomatoes have really taken off and have produced a number of green tomatoes. Most are large enough to begin ripening and as far as I’m concerned that’s just in time as the porch will be too cool soon for the tomatoes to survive.

I think that I’ll bring the tropical plants inside and place them in our sunny spare bedroom upstairs.

I do this every year, but I’ve found that not all of the plants make it through the winter. We have a humidifier that we use upstairs in the winter time, but I think that the plants find the air too dry even with the extra humidity we try to put in the air.

Perhaps we’ll get another humidifier or vaporizer to put right in the room with the plants. That will certainly increase the total humidity upstairs!

They have to combat dry winter furnace heated air and the occasional white fly or other pesty bug attack. I do give the plants a spray with a mild soapy water solution occasionally.

Anyone have any other tips for me as to how I can make sure my passion flower vines and other tropicals make it through the winter inside the house?






It’s really cooling off at night!

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Is it getting cooler in your area? It’s getting cooler here and the temperatures seem to be dropping lower than they should at night for this time of year.

On Sunday I happened to look at my weather widget on my computer and I saw that it was supposed to go down to 0 Celsius overnight. Yikes! Zero at this time of year? I’ve still got tomatoes, Cannas, Passion flower vines and other tropicals outdoors!

My husband and I talked about how low the temperatures were going to go and I thought about just covering the plants with a sheet of burlap. We have plenty of that for winterizing so it’s handy! Instead we decided to bring some of the more delicate plants – passion flower, jasmine, ornamental pepper and two potted tomato plants into the back porch. Yes it still gets cool in that room but it’s enclosed and it always seem to stay a few degree’s warmer than whatever it is outdoors.

The enclosed back porch faces south and it’s been an ideal room to use when I’ve got my act together and have started seedlings in the late winter or early spring. Some winter days with the sun shinning fully into the room it can get up to between 70 and 80 F in there even when it’s close to zero outside! Of course at night without the sun it cools substantially.

Anyway, I think I might leave the potted tomatoes in the room for as long as I can. Perhaps I’ll be eating fresh tomatoes long after you’ve pulled yours out of the ground?

The sun’s guarding my garden

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Join Green Thumb Sunday
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Do you decorate your garden?

I have a few ceramic and metal pieces scattered throughout the garden beds, on the fence or in this case on the wall of my enclosed back porch. I think my garden decor is tasteful and there’s only a few items scattered throughout the garden so it’s certainly not overwhelming. If anything is overwhelming in my garden it’s the roses.

My sun ornament is beside my green pole beans which really do grow on poles – bamboo poles that is. You can even see some green bean dangling beside the sun if you look closely. Perhaps my sun ornament is helping the beans grow?

I have cucumbers beside the beans and we finally got to pick a cucumber on Saturday. It was hiding behind several leaves and we surprisingly didn’t see it for a while. It’s close to two feet long and is at least 2.5 inches in diameter! It’s huge! Perhaps we’ll make some cucumber sandwiches later today. Mmmmm.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

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