Keeping Boston Ferns Indoors Over the Winter
It’s Sue from Canton, “Hi. I’d like to ask you, is there any good way of keeping ferns over the winter? I mean, my Boston ferns, I know it’s been bad for everything else this year, but they’ve quadrupled, and they’re just so mammoth. I hate to throw them out. What can you do? Can you keep them in the garage all winter?”
Okay. You can overwinter them. They do like bright light, but indirect light. If your garage is heated and you do have some sunlight, it would be okay to have them in there, but you do want them to be above, like, 55 degrees. They are more tropical, so you would want to bring it more into the house. My only thing is they can get kind of messy.
When they come in, that environmental change will make them drop a ton of leaves, which is natural, so just know that that’s part of it. It’s not wrong, it’s just how that plant reacts when its environment changes.
Then in the springtime, I’d say maybe mid-March, that you would want to fertilize it really well. That would really help it green up. But, yes, you definitely can do that provided you have a good lighted area. Southern window or something like that.
And before you bring it in, shaking it all off would help, too. I would put systemic into the soil, which is like an insecticide. It is a preventative, and it will take care of anything it does have. I recommend doing that with any houseplants that you bring into the house. That way you’re not bringing any critters that you don’t want in the house. Sometimes when they get brought in, the soil warms up and the eggs hatch, and that’s when we get a lot of pests and stuff.
Our nighttime temps are hitting the 50s right now, we should be good for a while. Usually it’s mid-October, and ferns can be pretty tough as long as they’re covered, like under a covered porch, like just a fear of frost. You wouldn’t want to bring them in before we get frost.
As those temperatures reach the upper 30s, then it’s really time to make sure that you’ve got the insecticide in. Give the insecticide a week or two to work in the pot, and then it would be fine to bring them in.
Really, you’re attached to something, bring it in. I’ve done Rex begonias several times over the years. My thing is, like, I get them to live, but they don’t ever look as good the next year. No matter what I do to them, they don’t look as fresh as the new ones and the speed that a young plant grows versus an older plant, it takes longer for that older plant to come back sometimes than that younger plant. And so it’s patience. If you have the patience, you can be very successful at it.
I’ve known a lot of people that have done Boston ferns, and as long as you give it a good liquid fertilizer a couple times as soon as it starts getting really warm when you take it out, it greens right back up.
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