I love tropical plants, but in our climate it's a very sad time of the year if you sit and watch them die from the inevitable first freeze of the season. That's why I started to take some action and rescue my favorite ones. Today I have hundreds of plants in my collection because I bring them inside year after year and I wanted to share a few quick tidbits to keep in mind if you'd like to do the same!

Many small flowering annuals are short-lived tropical plants and are not worth bringing inside because they are prone to sap sucking pests like spider mites and mealybugs. You can grow many of these from seed or buy them at a reasonable price as seedlings. However, geraniums and begonias are an exception. They both make fantastic houseplants and do not grow easily from seed. Large tropical plants like palms and hibiscus are great to bring inside. Many of these plants will not make great houseplants, but they won't mind waiting out spring inside the house.

I always get asked "what about the bugs" when I tell people I bring my plants inside the house. Find a spray with neem oil to use on your plants before you bring them inside. This is an organic way to mitigate sap sucking bugs from damaging your plants. The "creepy crawly bugs" like beetles and grasshoppers usually are gone by the time I bring my plants inside because I always wait until the weather is cool and their populations are lower. Still, I always do a visual check to make sure there aren't any infestations in my plants. I usually end up with one or 2 bugs crawling out of their containers, but it's usually within the first day that I bring them inside the house. After that the only nuisance are the gnats - and there are some solutions that minimize that issue.

I always think about the climate these plants grow in when I consider bringing my plants inside. Although some advice recommends bringing plants inside when nights drop into the 50s, I wait much longer. I think of places like South Florida, where nights can drop in the 40s and daytime temperatures can only rise to 60F. These plants do fine! So that's typically the limit. Once daytime temperatures are not reaching 60F, it's a signal for me to bring them inside the house.

Some plants like elephant ears, bananas, dahlias, and cannas stay outside until a light frost singe just a few of the leaves. Afterward I cut the leaves off, dig these plants up and store them in the garage for winter.