Best Fertilizer for Peace Lilies
Houseplant owners love peace lilies for their beautiful, deep-green leaves and graceful white flowers. Peace lilies are also easy to care for because they don’t require a lot of light and they are pretty simple to water.
Another key factor of peace lily care is providing the right fertilizer. After all, producing those gorgeous green leaves and white flowers requires nutrients, and sometimes the nutrients present in your plant’s potting mix just aren’t enough!
That’s where fertilizer comes in.
While plants get their energy from sunlight (or full-spectrum grow lights, if you don’t have enough sunlight in your space), they also need minerals like potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus, copper, zinc, etc.
Fertilizer can provide this once a plant has used up all the nutrients in its potting mix, which can take as little as a few months. Think of fertilizer as a vitamin supplement for your plant, a lot like the vitamins you might take every day!
What is the Best Fertilizer for Peace Lilies?
When it comes to fertilizer, you have two basic choices: slow-release fertilizer or liquid fertilizer.
Slow-Release Fertilizer
Slow-release fertilizer comes in colorful little pellets that may already be present in your potting mix. (If you’ve ever wondered about those brightly colored specks in some potting soils, that’s pellet fertilizer!) These granules slowly release minerals into the soil over a period of a few months, so you only need to apply it every couple of months.
The drawback to slow-release fertilizers is that you can’t really control the rate at which the pellets dissolve or how many nutrients your plant is actually getting. This can lead to overfertilization if the pellets dissolve too quickly (which can result in yellowing leaves, chemically burned roots, etc.) or even nutrient deficiencies if the nutrients release slower than what your plant requires. Rough, right?
(If you think you might be overfertilizing your peace lily, here’s how to fix it.)
Liquid Fertilizer
Many people prefer liquid fertilizer because it’s much easier to control how much fertilizer your plant is actually getting. It’s also easy to use. You just dilute a little in water and water your plants like normal.
The main drawback to this method is that different liquid fertilizers have to be used on different schedules. For example, every 3 weeks, once per month, every other month…and it can get tricky to remember when you last fertilized and when you need to fertilize again!
Pay Attention to the NPK Ratio
The other factor you need to pay attention to when choosing a fertilizer for your peace lilies (or any plant) is the NPK ratio, which will be displayed on the bottle as a three-number series, such as 3-1-2, 20-20-20, etc. This is the ratio of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus present in the fertilizer, and different plants prefer different ratios.
Peace lilies do best with fertilizers that are evenly balanced or that have a little more nitrogen (N) in them.
Indoor Plant Food
Personally, I much prefer liquid fertilizer for my houseplants, but I am terrible at keeping track of fertilization schedules! So I decided to create my own fertilizer that was gentle enough to use with every watering so I didn’t have to remember a schedule, and well balanced so that I could use it on almost all of my houseplants, peace lilies included!
Indoor Plant Food is the best fertilizer for peace lilies. It has been working beautifully for all my houseplants, and it’s been a lifesaver for so many houseplant owners who don’t have the time or brain space to remember when to fertilize their plants. I just add some to my watering can each week and water as usual. And all my plants love it!
Indoor Plant Food is available on Amazon and is perfect for peace lilies, as well as nearly all of your other houseplants. Give it a try!
