Fertilizing is something that WILL affect the health of your indoor plant whether it’s for the better or for the worse. Before you dive right in, it’s important to know what you’re doing and how it can affect your plant. I compiled all the tips you need to know before fertilizing your indoor plant.
#1: Only Fertilize a Healthy Indoor Plant
It’s common to see a struggling indoor plant and assume that it needs fertilizer to fix all of it’s problems and save it. I’m here to tell you to avoid this way of thinking! Fertilizing your indoor plant actually adds more stress to it and if it’s in an unhealthy state, it can cause it’s health to worsen or even die. Before fertilizing, I highly recommend making sure your plant is doing well and can handle the stress of adding fertilizer.
If you suspect your plant does have a nutritional deficiency that’s causing yellowing of leaves or some other symptom, then just be sure it’s not some other factor causing this. Make sure it has good lighting, you have good watering practices, etc, etc. Once you’ve determined there’s no other problems going on, you are free to fertilize your indoor plant!
#2: Less Fertilizer is More
It sounds counter intuitive, but it’s true! Too much fertilizer can cause your plant to suffer a burn where your leaves can start to crisp up around their edges or even die off. If this does happen to you, don’t worry, you can help fix it. Simply place your houseplant under a faucet and leach water through it’s soil to try to flush out as much fertilizer as possible. To avoid this problem, be conservative with your fertilizer and don’t ever add more than the fertilizer label prescribes. For example, if the label recommends five drops per gallon of water, then only add four or five just to be safe.
#3: Consider Your Indoor Plant’s Environment
If your indoor plant is located in a poorly lit room where its growth is rather slow, then chances are that it won’t be needing to be fertilized often, if at all. The purpose of fertilizing is to replenish the nutrients in the soil for your indoor plant to take up and use. If your plant is growing slowly due to low light then it’s not taking up as many nutrients so it will not need replenishment as often. In fact, replacing it’s soil every few years could supply enough nutrients for your plant to be healthy without having to fertilizing it.
#4: Organic Fertilizers Aren’t Worth It
What I mean by this is that organic fertilizers often have such low levels of active ingredients so that they just aren’t very cost-effective. The money you’re paying for them doesn’t even match up to value you’ll get from the standard fertilizers out there. Another negative to consider when purchasing organic indoor plant fertilizers is that they often contain ingredients such as blood meal, fish, bone meal, etc. and can carry some potent odors that aren’t very desirable. If you’re interested in what I do recommend, you can read more at “How to Choose a Fertilizer for Your Indoor Plant”.
I hope this helps you when it comes to fertilizing your plant! If you want to hear more, check out our podcast “Plant School”, or our tenneyplants YouTube Channel for specific guides on fertilizing your houseplant.