Chinese Evergreen Care Through the Year: A Season by Season Plan

The year has two halves

Everything about looking after a Chinese evergreen follows from one fact: it grows only while the room is warm, and it stops completely below about 60F (15C). In the warm half of the year it wants water, feed, repotting and propagation. In the cool half it wants none of those, and giving them anyway is how most plants are lost.

The switch is not a date on a calendar, because it depends on your house rather than on the outdoors. Watch the night-time temperature in the room where the plant stands, and change the regime when it settles below 64F (18C) in autumn and back above it in spring. That single observation drives the whole schedule below.

Spring: the busy season

Spring is when everything structural gets done, because the plant has a full season of warmth ahead to recover from it. Wait until you have seen a new leaf unfurling rather than acting on the calendar, since a plant in a cool room may start weeks later than one in a warm one.

1. Check the roots and repot if needed Only every two or three years, and only one pot size up. Do this before growth is fully underway rather than in the middle of it, and shade the plant for a fortnight afterwards.
2. Start feeding again A balanced liquid houseplant feed at half the stated strength, every three or four weeks. Do not feed a plant you have just repotted, and never feed dry compost, which burns the roots.
3. Shorten the watering interval gradually Go from three weeks to two, then to ten days, over about a month. Jumping straight back to a summer interval in a room that is still cool at night causes root rot.
4. Tidy the plant Cut off any leaf that was damaged over winter, at the base of its stalk. Wipe the dust off the remaining leaves with a damp cloth so they can work properly.
5. Cut back a leggy plant now Late spring is the moment for this. The stump has the whole summer to reshoot and the top has the whole summer to root.

Summer: growth, and two things to avoid

Summer needs the least intervention. Keep the interval short enough that the plant is not sitting dry for days, feed monthly, and take cuttings or divide if you want more plants. Two things go wrong, and both are about position rather than care.

1. Keep it off sunny sills The sun is high and strong, and two hours of direct summer sun bleaches leaves permanently. Move it back into the room or add a sheer curtain before the hot weather arrives, not after the damage.
2. Stay out of the air conditioning A cold draft from a vent causes exactly the same gray chilling patches in summer as a cold window does in winter. Check where the air actually lands, not where the unit is.
3. Propagate now Divisions and cuttings both need a room above 70F (21C) to root reliably. Summer is the window, and work done now has a full season to establish.
4. Move it outside only into deep shade It can spend summer outdoors in full shade, but the light there is still far brighter than indoors, so build up over two weeks. Bring it back in while nights are still above 60F (15C).

Autumn: the transition that matters most

Autumn is the season people get wrong, because the plant still looks like it did at midsummer while the conditions have completely changed. Every winter loss is set up in autumn, by continuing to water and feed a plant that has already stopped growing.

1. Stop feeding early Stop as soon as the nights are consistently below 64F (18C). Fertilizer given to a plant that has stopped growing simply accumulates in the compost as salts and burns the roots.
2. Stretch the watering interval Go from a week to ten days to a fortnight over about six weeks. Check the compost rather than counting days, because the pot is now drying far more slowly than it was.
3. Find the cold spots before you need to know Hold a strip of tissue at leaf height by every window, door and vent with the heating on. Anywhere it moves is somewhere the plant should not spend the winter.
4. Move it to its winter position One step closer to the window for the light, but off cold floors and away from the glass at night. Colored-leaved plants need this move more than green ones.
5. Check for pests before the heating goes on Warm dry indoor air is what lets a small spider mite population explode. Rinse the leaf undersides once in autumn and you avoid most of it.

Bring any plant that summered outdoors back in early, while nights are still above 60F (15C), and rinse the leaves and the outside of the pot first so you do not carry pests indoors with it.

Winter: do almost nothing, deliberately

The correct winter regime feels like neglect. No feed at all, water every three or four weeks with tepid water on a mild morning, no repotting, no cutting back, no propagation. The plant is not growing, so it cannot use any of it, and everything you add sits in cold wet compost.

The one thing that does need attention is temperature. Check the night-time low at leaf height, not the thermostat reading, and act on anything below 55F (13C). Curtains closed across a window sill trap a plant in the cold air at the glass, so bring it into the room instead.

The record that makes next year easier

This is a plant whose problems play out over weeks, and it rewards a written record more than almost any other houseplant. Four things are worth noting and they take a minute each: the date you last repotted and the pot size, the date you switched the watering interval in each direction, the lowest night temperature at the plant's winter position, and the date you first saw any leaf damage.

After a single year that record answers the questions that otherwise have no answer. Whether small new leaves mean a tight pot or too little light. Whether the gray patches in late winter came from the window or the doorway. Whether your house makes the seasonal switch in early autumn or several weeks later. None of that is guessable, and all of it is obvious once written down.