Preparing for the Winter!

Having an IKEA Greenhouse cabinet during the winter time can protect your beautiful indoor house plants and rare tropical plants from going into dormancy. Plants can continue to thrive in their controlled environments from these greenhouses, growing as if it is summer all year round. Here are some considerations that may be helpful in preparing for the cold season!

Growlights

Many people install grow lights into their Greenhouse Cabinet set up to provide an optimal environment for their plants to grow. During the winter time, it is crucial for the plants to have these grow lights as the days can be shorter (less natural light) and the lights could even provide some warmth in the cabinet. You can use timers for these growlights for an automated set up to provide 12-16 hours of light per day for your plants. Growlights that we use at home and at our shop are from Soltech Solutions, including the Highland Lights, Aspect lights, and Grove lights. We use the Grove lights for the cabinets.

Heatmat/Seedling Mat

A seedling mat can help with keeping a consistent temperature for your plants Especially for propagations and corms, I would use a seedling mat inside of the cabinet. The warmth and humidity can help in promoting the roots to grow faster and healthier in our experience! Because it is a fairly low temperature, we tend to just have plants directly on top of the mat and it doesn’t significantly increase the temperature in the entire cabinet but it can definitely help during the winter. Here is the link to the seedling mat that we use!

Weatherstripping & Humidifiers

Weather stripping can be helpful with sealing in the humidity and keeping a consistent temperature. Depending on where you live, winters can be extremely cold AND dry! Sealing in the humidity can be very helpful for your tropical plants to mimic the environment that they are native to. When the cabinets are well weatherstripped, you may not need actual humidifiers to increase your humidity. You can put pebble trays inside to increase humidity, on your seedling mat. The more plants you have in your cabinet, you can also stabilize and maintain your humidity (so get those plants on. your bucketlist!). Putting actual humidifiers can be quite risky and dangerous as stated by electricians, so please try your best to try other methods for your safety. Check out our Favorites from our Amazon Store Front to see some of our favorite accessories and these materials for the cabinets!

If you have any questions, please be sure to email us or submit it through our Contact Form! We hope that this is all useful information.