Beginner Gardening: Winter rest periods: Do we need 'em?, 1 by pauliewalnuts

pauliewalnuts wrote:
...and the questions just keep on coming. I'm guessing they might not have definitive answers but I'd still be very interested to hear anyone's opinion or experience of house plant winter care, especially at more Northern latitudes. I've been thinking a lot about this subject as, in terms of light conditions, we're almost in mid-winter here in the UK (down to 8 hours daylight and often of poor quality); however a lot of my plants show absolutely no signs of slowing growth. In fact, I'd swear that some of them are growing more vigorously now than they did in the summer (with double the daylight hours!).

Before I discovered Dave's Garden all my plant knowledge came from the few decent house plant books I could find and all of them mention winter rest periods where growth slows down or stops, where watering is reduced and feeding is stopped or drastically reduced (admittedly they are all published in the UK and aimed at British readers with their very pronounced differences in summer/winter conditions). One source mentions that plants need 12-16 hours of daylight to maintain active growth, so why do a lot of mine continue to flourish? I'm making sure that they are kept just moist (no overwatering), the temperature is not excessive (around 60º - 65º F, as recommended for most plants during winter, in all the books I've read) and feeding has been very much reduced/stopped. So I'm pretty sure I'm not forcing the plants to grow against their wills!

So here are some questions:

• Should I worry about plants not getting rested over the winter months?

• If they continue to grow on the levels of light they are receiving should I just be happy about it and give them water, warmth and fertilizer as normal?

• Will they suffer by continuing to grow through winter, and if so, should I "encourage" them to rest by reducing light levels, temperature, feeding further? (Although I'm assuming that a lot of plants don't have any rest periods in their natural environment as there is not such a marked difference in seasonal conditions?)

•Is it still too early for some plants to "rest".

• Has the importance of the "rest period" been exaggerated?

I apologise if some of my questions are a bit dumb, but I really don't want to lose any plants over winter by not caring for them properly.

I look forward to any/all replies and thanks for reading this far!

Paul.

BTW, here are some pics I just took - Epipremnum continuing to climb; Monstera putting out another big leaf; Ficus elastica branching (I find this strangely exciting, lol); new Schefflera elegantissima leaves; Aglaonema continuing to flower; Chlorophytum having babies!