Useful Feeding For Indoor Plants

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Indoor plants are faithful companions of our everyday life. They decorate the interior, delight us with their appearance and, of course, need proper care, which includes not only regular watering, but also systematic feeding. Since the space for their growth is limited by a sufficiently compact pot, in order for indoor plants to grow well and develop actively, they need a wide variety of nutrients. What is it worth periodically feeding these green pets?

What will happen if you do not feed indoor plants?

Systematic feeding allows indoor plants to receive all the nutrients and valuable trace elements they need. If the plants experience their deficiency, then after a while they will noticeably weaken and become susceptible to attacks of various ailments, and their flowering will either be delayed or even stop altogether.

How to understand that plants need feeding?

In most cases, a special need for feeding occurs in indoor plants during the period of their highest growth activity (most often this period covers the time period from spring to autumn). In order to replenish the stocks of vital nutrients for plants, they should be transplanted into new soil from time to time - soil depletion in flower pots occurs every few months. And in order to understand that plants need additional feeding, one should pay attention to a number of "signals" they send. The need for top dressing is indicated by drooping and crushed leaves, small or underdeveloped flowers or their complete absence, color or spotting uncharacteristic for foliage, loss of resistance to various pests and diseases, slowing growth, as well as excessive elongation or weakening of the stems.

Mineral fertilizers

Quite often, indoor plants are fed with mineral fertilizers, the release form of which can be arbitrarily diverse: it can be water-soluble powders or tablets diluted with water for irrigation, liquid concentrates, or even sticks simply stuck into the substrate, transferring the nutrients contained in them to the plants during watering.

Organic fertilizers

These include bird droppings, manure and humus, which contain a huge amount of useful substances that in every possible way contribute to the normalization of the soil microflora and the improvement of its structure. Most often, on the basis of organic fertilizers, various infusions are prepared for subsequent irrigation, while five liters of water are taken for a pound of rotted cow dung, and about twelve to thirteen liters of water for a similar amount of bird droppings.

Natural fertilizers

The popularity of natural fertilizers is gradually gaining momentum, because they do not contain harmful chemicals, and they very rarely have a repulsive smell!

An excellent fertilizer for indoor plants will be coffee grounds, which also helps to loosen the soil. It is best to use this product during plant transplantation - in this case, the soil will not only become airy and light, but will also receive the nutrition it needs. And also coffee grounds are an excellent assistant in the difficult task of neutralizing the acidity of the soil.

Another excellent fertilizer is banana peel, which many have heard about the miraculous properties of. In order to achieve the best results, chopped banana peels are added to the soil also when transplanting indoor flowers. And when the peels start to rot, the plants will receive the nutrients they need.

You can safely use the crusts of various citrus fruits (oranges, tangerines and their other counterparts). Infusion on the zest is one of the most effective homemade fertilizers. To prepare such a fertilizer, the crushed crusts are thrown into a liter jar, after which this jar is filled to the brim with boiling water. They insist on the crusts for about a day, and then filter them, add water to the original volume and start watering.

Tea brewing will also serve well - if you regularly water indoor plants with weak tea leaves without sugar, they will grow faster and bloom better. Quite often used for dressing and ash, onion peel or yeast.

And nettle infusion will definitely help restore the depleted soil: 100 g of fresh nettle is poured with a liter of water, after which everything is tightly covered with a lid and insisted throughout the day. Then the composition is filtered, diluted with water in a ratio of 1:10 and immediately put into operation.

Pamper your houseplants with healthy food, and they will certainly delight you with their fast growth and luxurious flowering!