Increase humidity for plants ☁️⬆️ humidity for plants

Hi everybody, I hope that you’re doing well and welcome back to plants and Lucia. My name is Lucia and today we’ll be talking about humidity for our houseplants. Okay, coming up. So why do we need to increase humidity? As you know, many of our house plants come from the tropics. Tropical environments have very high humidity, so they are accostumed to this. It is recommended that we keep humidity between 50 to 60 percent where we have our houseplants.

00:36 - Now if you think about it, in the winter when we turn on our heating systems and heating vents, the air in our homes becomes drier. And it can even decrease to 40 percent or lower. This is not good for our plants and it’s also not good for us. Really low humidity levels can cause nose bleed as well as dry skin or irritation. So even for us it’s good to maintain humidity levels between 50 to 60 percent. So now let’s see how we can measure the humidity in our homes so we make sure that our plants are happy and we are happy. The way that I measure humidity at home is by two ways: The first one I use this humidstat. This is very useful and very easy to use. So as you can see, it actually shows the temperature in the room and the humidity level. And with the smiley face it tells me that that’s ideal. So we want to keep humidity between 50 to 60 percent, not higher than 70 percent because this can cause mold and it’s too humid, and not lower than 40 percent.

01:40 - The second tool that I use to measure humidity is our humidifier right here. I really love this humidifier because I can actually set the level of humidity that I want. So I can set it up to keep the room at 55 per cent humidity, and it will only produce humidity when it feels that the room is at a lower level. So let me tell you a combination of ways that I use to increase humidity around my plants. The first tip that I’m going to share with you is a very easy one.

02:09 - In laundry days, instead of drying your clothes in the dryer, just put them on a rack close to your plants. So as your clothes dry out, the water is going to evaporate and this will produce a little bit more humidity. This is great for your plants and it is also more environmentally friendly than using the dryer every time. The second thing that you can do to increase humidity for your plants is to place all of your tropical plants together. This is because through the process of transpiration water evaporates through the leaves.

02:41 - So if you put all of your tropical plants together they will help each other with humidity levels. Of course, if you have tropical plants that really like high levels of humidity I recommend that you invest in a humidifier. So we have this one and I really like it because of different reasons. Let me show you. Okay you guys so here is our humidifier, and I really love it for different reasons: first of all as I told you before, you can actually set up the humidity level that you want so right now it is at 61 percent. Then you can actually control different things here so here is where you decide how high you want the humidity.

03:20 - So for example, here I can set it up at 60. Here you have the mist level. So it has different…I’ll just put it a little bit higher so you can see… it has different levels one two and three. Then over here we have the sleep button. So that means that when we turn it on the light is off. Here you have a timer so you can actually set it up by hours. If you want it to be on by three hours one hour four hours whatever, you can just set it up here. Another way to increase the humidity for our plants is to make a humidity tray. So this is really easy all you need is a tray and some pebbles or rocks, just like here, and then what we do is we put some water inside the tray, and what we want is that the water stays just below the top of the rocks because we’re going to place our plant on top of the rocks and we don’t want the plant to be sitting in water. On top of all of these things, you can also mist your plants. And this is because misting the leaves of your plants is just like the process of transpiration.

04:30 - So you will have some water on the leaves and as this water evaporates this will create humidity. Now, the next strategy I really like because it actually serves also as a decoration method. So if you find some bowls or pots that you really like but don’t know how to use them you can actually put some water in them and you can place them around the house. You can also place these bowls with water on top of the radiators or heating vents so the water will evaporate and create more humidity. And the last tip that I have for you actually comes from Harli G and this includes the use of pots that are really pretty but we don’t know how to use them, they may be too big for our plants or they may not have drainage holes.

05:15 - So for example, for me I really like using pots that have drainage holes but sometimes I find a pot that is really pretty. So let me just bring one to show you how you can use it. So here we have a pot it’s actually really beautiful, it’s handmade, but it doesn’t have drainage holes. So what we can do is actually add a smaller nursery pot inside upside down. Then we will add some water all the way just below the top of the nursery pot that is inside this one and we will add our plant on top of that nursery pot.

05:47 - So the plant is not touching the water, but we’re actually localizing the humidity inside the pot. This is a great way to increase humidity for one plant that really likes high levels of humidity. And what I would recommend is that you change the water every week or so. Do you have any other tips to increase humidity for your plants? Please make sure to comment below so we can all learn together. And as always, I will see you in the next video. Okay, ciaoooooo! .