Snake plants are one of my favorite indoor plants. They come in all sorts of varieties and are striking with their dark, stiff, upright leaves. If you want to keep your snake plant in its best shape possible with the nutrients it needs, you’re going to need to fertilize it. We’ll quickly go over a bit of the science behind fertilizing so you know exactly how it works and I’ll also be explaining it in a very simple manner so that any skill level can understand. That way, you’ll be ready to fertilize your snake plant and understand why you’re doing it!
When fertilizing a snake plant (Sansevieria), make sure it is in good health. You’ll need a fertilizer like Schultz 10-15-10 Plant Food Fertilizer, a clean watering can or bucket and a liquid measuring cup. Follow the instructions on the label when adding fertilizer to your water, and make sure you don’t add too much. Mix until the fertilizer is dissolved in the water, then pour it into your snake plant’s soil. How much you’ll want to drench the soil will depend on whether your pot has drainage holes or not.
Benefits of Fertilizing
Fertilizing your snake plant is like giving it a vitamin. Just as a vitamin does, it provides the plant with nutrients it needs and keeps it in good health, but it’s not necessary for its survival. It can take years for your plant to show you that it absolutely needs some fertilizer. Fertilizing your snake plant properly can help it with its growth and help it to have less problems, if properly done. Though their blooms aren’t very well-known, fertilizing can increase your chances of having your snake plant bloom. If you’d like to have your snake plant growing at an optimum rate and have a greater chance of seeing it flower, then fertilizing is the way to go.
What Fertilizer To Use
Choosing a fertilizer can be the most difficult part to even getting started. There are SO many options to choose from out there, and some fertilizers are better than others.
Before I give you my specific recommendation, my personal opinion is to steer clear of most organic fertilizers including things such as “fish meal”, “blood meal”, “worm poop”, etc. There are a lot of different types but most of them have such little nutritional value and high prices that make them have little worth. The only upside of these organic fertilizers is that they definitely are environmentally friendly, but I would argue that normal fertilizers are just as environmentally friendly when they’re used properly. As long as you aren’t dumping your fertilizer down the drain or into your local river, you won’t be having a negative impact on the environment with your normal “un-organic” fertilizer. That’s my two cents on buying organic fertilizers, and you’re welcome to listen to my advice or leave it as is.
I have personally been using Schultz 10-15-10 Plant Food Fertilizer. I’ll put its Amazon link right here. (We are Amazon Associates and earn a small commission from sales that use these links at no extra cost to you.)
This is not a sponsored product, just one that I’ve personally used and have been really pleased with. I’ve used this one often and it’s given me and my plants no problems at all to complain about. It’s high quality and has good nutritional value that can be used on your snake plant as well as many other indoor plants. Another plus is that it lasts you a long time. I’ve had mine for over a year and I’m still not halfway through it. It definitely is a worthy investment for a healthy snake plant or for the health of any indoor plant, for that matter.
Understanding Your Fertilizer
Knowing how this fertilizer will work with your snake plant’s soil and why it needs to be fertilized is a key piece of doing this properly. The 10-15-10 on its label relates to the percentage of NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium(K)), in that order. You’ll find these numbers listed on every fertilizer that you ever buy so you can compare their NPK values.
For Schultz 10-15-10 Plant Food Fertilizer, 10% of the active ingredients is nitrogen, another 15% is phosphorus, and 10% for potassium. The remaining percentage is micronutrients or other ingredients to help your snake plant. N, P, and K are considered to be the three main macronutrients that all plants need.
Nitrogen helps with overall greenness, phosphorus helps roots and flower development, and potassium helps with the general cellular functions.
Why do you have to be putting all these nutrients into your plants soil? Every time you water your snake plant, it takes up nutrients and water through its roots to be used by the plant, therefore, these nutrients are slowly depleted from the soil. If you were to never fertilize your plant, it would eventually run out of key nutrients and show signs of deficiencies with yellowing leaves, off-color leaves, etc. Most snake plants would take years to show these signs of nutrient deficiency, so if you do notice a yellowing leaf, use the method of deduction to figure out what it was caused by before assuming it just needs fertilizer.
Snake plants will have leaves turn yellow every once in a while when they’re old or it can turn yellow in cases of under or overwatering (which the snake plant is particularly unforgiving of overwatering). Just be sure that any yellow leaves aren’t being caused by some other factor before you assume it needs fertilizer and more nutrients in its soil, as this type of thinking could cause you more problems than you need.
How Often Should I Fertilize My Snake Plant
Despite popular belief, there’s not a certain time of year or strict schedule to follow with fertilizing your snake plant. It is the amount of sun that your snake plant is getting that will determine how often you should be fertilizing it. Here are some general guidelines that you can refer to:
-
High light = Fertilize every 3 months
-
Medium light = fertilize twice a year
-
Low light = fertilize once a year
If you fertilize your snake plant more often than the guidelines above, you risk overloading your snake plant with nutrients and it could cause nutrient toxicity or fertilizer burn. You’ll see this manifested in crisp leaf edges, or sudden yellowing leaves. This happens because a plant in high light is gathering lots of energy and taking up nutrients rapidly to keep up with all the energy it can expend.
A plant in low light is not taking up nutrients very fast and therefore will not need to be fertilized very often. Snake plants are rather slow growing and often advertised as plants that do well in low light, so you shouldn’t need to be fertilizing all that often. If you’re still not sure and doubt your ability to know how much light your snake plant is getting, go on the more conservative side and only do it once a year. Snake plants are definitely one of those indoor plants that don’t require heavy fertilizing.
Fertilization Steps
Now that you know the basics of how fertilization works, its benefits, and how often you should be doing it, you’re ready to fertilize! Before we begin, check off the following two statements to make sure your snake plant is actually ready to be fertilized.
-
My snake plant is in good health & has no underlying conditions
-
I am not fertilizing to fix my snake plant’s problems
The reason I have you check off those boxes because too many times I’ve seen people use fertilizer as a sort of “Hail Mary” to fix their plant’s problems and get it to some perfect image of where they think their plant should be. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. If your snake plant is already stressed and struggling with something else like unhealthy watering practices, pests, sun scorch, etc., then fertilizing it can just add stress to it and could hurt it more than help it, sometimes even pushing it over the edge and causing it to die.
If your snake plant isn’t struggling with any outside factors and is in good health, it will be just fine with fertilizer being added to it!
#1: Gather Supplies
Fertilizing your snake plant is really simple so your list of needed supplies is a small one. All you’re going to need is your fertilizer, a clean watering can or bucket (I keep a separate bucket just for fertilizing), a liquid measuring cup, and your snake plant, of course.
#2: Mix Water and Fertilizer
This step is probably the most important one because it’s where damage can happen if done improperly! If you use too much fertilizer, you risk causing fertilizer burn which can damage your plant with browned leaf tips and edges (more details on step 4). Read the label of your fertilizer and make sure that you’re adding the right amount of fertilizer for the amount of water you have measured out. If anything, err on the side of adding less fertilizer than what the fertilizer says to add so that you don’t risk harming your snake plant.
Once you’ve put the drops of fertilizer into the cool water, give it a good mix around with a stick or spoon to ensure that it fully dissolves into the water.
#3: Drench Soil
Fully drench/saturate the soil so that water starts coming out of the bottom of your pot. This will ensure that ALL of the soil in the pot has a chance to replenish its nutrients and reach all of your snake plant’s roots. I recommend placing your snake plant in the sink or somewhere where you don’t mind the excess water running out.
**If your snake plant’s pot has no drainage holes at the bottom then do not follow this rule! Instead, you need to be very careful with how much water you pour into the soil. If you add too much, you risk having it sit at the bottom of the pot for days and causing your roots to literally rot and your snake plant is likely to die or lose a lot of its foliage.
To avoid causing problems, you can stretch out watering it with your fertilizer-water mixture over a set of a few weeks, or you can carefully water/fertilize it once without adding too much.
#4: Watch for Signs of Over-Fertilization
Over the next few days, if you notice any brown edges, browned tips, entire yellow or browned leaves on your snake plant, it’s a sign you used too much fertilizer. But don’t fret! It can be helped by placing your snake plant in the sink or shower and leaching out the soil. This means that you place it under running water and let the water drain out the bottom of the pot. Do this for a minute or two to help get rid of excess fertilizer/nutrients and your snake plant will have a greater chance of being able to bounce back and be just fine.
I hope this guide helps you fertilize your snake plant properly without causing any problems for you and your plant. Fertilizing it can be a great way to replenish the soil’s nutrients and help your snake plant stay vibrant and healthy. And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll even get to see your snake plant flower! You deserve it after the research you’ve put into this plant of yours!
Be sure to pin this article for future reference and you can read more about snake plant care here:
…