In this week’s issue:

• What a Sheffield summer actually looks like (spoiler: grey, then briefly tropical)
• Why most summer plant advice is written for a place you don't live
• The four things worth doing when the hot fortnight finally lands
• Sending your houseplants on their summer holidays
• The plant that suntans
• And more...

🇬🇧 Sheffield Answers

Every week, I get tons of questions about growing houseplants. In “Sheffield Answers”, I’m going to pick one out each week and answer it. Want to submit your own and get it featured next week? Click here to ask me a question!​

Question: If you buy a pot that contains multiple plants, would you separate them? For example, with something like a Monstera. I know separating something like a pothos could take a while because there are so many stems. William

My Answer: For Monsteras, I often recommend separating them if you want larger, better-shaped plants or easier support. For pothos, I'd usually leave them together unless the pot is severely overcrowded, because a full pot is generally what most people are aiming for.

🪴 HOW TO & TIPS

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Summer in Sheffield (all two weeks of it)

Let me describe summer up here, for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure.

It's grey. It's grey for quite a while. You put a jumper on in June and feel slightly foolish, then vindicated. The days are genuinely long, light until gone nine, but a lot of that light is doing its work through a lid of cloud. And then, without much warning, you get a fortnight where it's suddenly properly hot, everyone's a bit stunned, nobody's house is built for it, and the plants have opinions.

Then it goes grey again.

I say all this because most summer plant care advice is written for somewhere that isn't here. It assumes months of strong, steady sun. It tells you to worry constantly about scorching and daily watering and moving everything away from the windows. And if you follow it to the letter in Sheffield, you spend most of the summer solving a problem you don't have, then get caught out completely in the two weeks you actually do.

So here's the honest version, for the climate we've actually got.

Most of the summer, do less than you think

For the grey majority of a northern summer, your plants are getting long daylight but fairly gentle light. This is close to ideal for a lot of tropicals, which evolved under a canopy and never much liked direct sun anyway.

What it means in practice: don't panic-water. Long days make people think everything's drying out fast, but cloud and mild temperatures slow evaporation right down. Overwatering in a mild, damp Sheffield July is far more common than drought. Finger in the soil, first knuckle, water only when it's dry. Same rule as ever, it's just that summer tricks people out of following it.

Then the hot fortnight lands, and this is where you earn it

When the real heat finally arrives, it arrives fast, and a house that's spent months being mild turns into a greenhouse in about a day. This is the bit worth actually doing something about.

1. Move plants back from south and west windows. Not all summer. Just now. That gentle windowsill becomes a magnifying glass during a hot spell, and this is when leaves actually scorch. A metre back, or a sheer curtain, and you've solved it.

2. Water in the evening, not the middle of the day. In the heat, midday water half-evaporates before the roots get a look in, and droplets on leaves in strong sun can mark them. Evening gives the plant all night to drink properly.

3. Group them up. Plants clustered together raise the humidity around each other and hold it, which matters when the heat's pulling moisture out of everything. This is the one bit of the classic advice that genuinely earns its place, and only now.

4. Leave the ferns and calatheas out of the sunniest rooms entirely. The thin-leaved, humidity-hungry lot suffer most in a dry hot spell. Give them your coolest, shadiest room for the fortnight and they'll thank you.

That's it. Four things, for two weeks. The rest of the summer you can more or less leave them to enjoy the long days.

The bigger point

Learn your own climate rather than the one in the care guide. Sheffield gives you long light, a lot of cloud, and a short sharp burst of real heat, and a plant routine built around that beats one built around an imaginary Mediterranean July every time.

Watch how your plants actually behave in the room you actually have. It's the whole game, honestly. Everything else is just someone else's weather.

🪴 JUST FOR FUN

Sending your houseplants on holiday

Now that I've got a garden (and a whole second channel to fill because of it), I've been doing something this summer I always meant to: putting some of the houseplants outside for their holidays.

A shady, sheltered spot outdoors during the warm weeks does a lot of tropicals a world of good. More air movement, brighter ambient light than any windowsill, actual rain. Mine come back looking noticeably happier.

A few rules if you try it:

• Shade, not sun. A plant that's lived indoors will burn in direct outdoor sun almost instantly. Dappled shade, north-facing, under a table. Ease them in.
• Watch for hitchhikers. Everything wants to live on a plant that's been outside. Check thoroughly before it comes back in, or you'll import the entire garden's pest population into your living room.
• Bring them in well before it turns. The moment the nights start cooling, the holiday's over. Tropicals sulk at the first cold night.

I've been documenting some of this over on Sheffield Made Gardens if you want to see how it's going. Turns out having a garden is just houseplants with more mud and worse weather.

📹 Watch & Grow: This Week On YouTube

👉 Florist Secrets That Keep Flowers Fresh For Weeks

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👉 These Hidden Clues Tell You Trouble Is Coming

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Did you know?

Some succulents suntan. When plants like aloes, echeverias and sedums get more light than usual, they produce red and purple pigments called anthocyanins, essentially a sunscreen, which is why a green echeveria can blush pink or bronze at the edges over a bright spell. It's a stress response, but a mild and rather beautiful one, and it fades back to green when the light drops again. So if your succulent changes colour during the hot fortnight, it isn't dying. It's just been on its holidays too.