As my dry hands will attest, cold weather and warm heating in Colorado can result in some exceptionally dry air! Yikes! This can be a nuisance for not only people but also indoor houseplants! Most plants do well with humidity levels between 40-50%. During the winter many homes can experience dips of humidity as low as 10-20% leading to cracked skin and excessively dry noses. Low humidity can even cause your plants to drop leaves! Plants can help by adding some moisture to the air; some estimates suggest that plants release around 97% of the moisture they take in through their leaves! But in the winter, plants grow more slowly and generally need less water; because of this, it can be easy to over-water them. Yellowing leaves or some die back can be a sign that your plants are being over watered. Here are a couple tricks that can help to raise the humidity around your plants without harming or over-watering them. - Catch plates with gravel. A little basin or catch-plate filled with gravel and water can help increase the humidity of a small area. You will want to be careful about not letting the soil of your potted plants come into contact with any basin or plates of water as this can result in the soil becoming waterlogged.
- Group your plants! Groupings of plants can help each other out. Any moisture that is released by the leaves of your plants will result in a slightly more humid environment around the plant; the more plants that are located in one area, the more relatively humid that area will become.
- Spraying and Misting. Misting the leaves of your plants can help a little, but it is generally recommended that this is not done too frequently in order to avoid issues of plant disease that can arise from wet or moist leaves.
- Humidifiers. Consider purchasing a humidifier; these can provide the heavy lifting necessary to substantially increase the humidity of a room and counter our dry winter air. Do your research though; due to Colorado’s hard water, ultrasonic humidifiers can aerosolize hard minerals in the water leading to the accumulation of white dust on surfaces around the room.
It can also help to avoid fertilizing during the winter. The addition of easily accessible nutrients can cause the plants stress during a period when there is less light and a generally slower rate of growth. Additional reading | 
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