The Best Time To Bring Your Orchids Indoors, According To Grumpy

About This Episode

When is the best time to bring orchids indoors? Plus, Grumpy’s plant of the week.

Question Of The Week

"I've been growing moth orchids in pots on my covered porch during the summertime. All of them are actively growing and doing well. When is the best time to bring them indoors." - Wyatt

Grumpy's Response: I've always found that bringing plants indoors before they die outdoors is a good policy. You see, moth orchids are tropical plants and they do not like cold weather, so bring them indoors before the temperatures drop into the 50s and place them close to a window that has bright indirect light. Unless, of course, your family wears bear skins and you keep your thermostat turned down to 35 degrees in winter, in which case, you have no business growing moth orchids.

Plant Of The Week

Cape Plumbago

Our Plant of the Week is a semi-tropical shrub called cape plumbago. And if you go down to the beach, around the Gulf Coast in Florida and stuff like that, a lot of times you'll see these in pots. And these are shrubs that grow to be three to four feet tall with several stems coming up. And they have these sky blue flowers, and they start blooming in warm weather, which means when they're down at the beach, they start blooming in April, and they just bloom all summer and they're really beautiful.

• They're very easy to take care of.
• They don't have very many pests.
• They don't need a whole lot of water and it's just something that you can get months and months of flowers off of just one pot.

So I see them up here. We live in Birmingham. I see them in the garden centers and people say, "Well, is it winter hardy here?" No, it's not. It's only winter hardy when you get down near the coast and in Florida and in zones nine and ten. So why would you buy one now? Well, let's say that you're having a get-together and a party and you want the front porch to look great, you just get two of these things, they come in probably about three-gallon pots, stick them in some nice planters by the door and put some other flowers in around, and you have a really nice presentation. I've also seen people who will grow them through the summer here. They'll get, like, five or six of them and put them around the pool, which makes it look, you know, really tropical, refreshing.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 30 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.