Anthurium plants are popular houseplants that many people love keeping in their homes. These pretty flowering plants can truly add color and charm to your home.
If you want these plants to grow strong and bloom, it’s important to care for them well. This means ensuring that the plants get enough sunlight and water.
Of course, you might be wondering if fertilizer will help out as well. What type should you use for anthuriums?
Keep reading to learn about fertilizing anthurium plants. You’ll learn about the best options as well as how you should approach things to get the best results.
Do Anthuriums Need Fertilizer?
You can get away with avoiding fertilizer when caring for anthurium plants. The plant won’t die if you don’t give it fertilizer.
Meet the other care needs of the plant and ensure that it’s planted in nutrient-rich soil. Doing this will be enough to keep the plant alive and make it look healthy.
Of course, using fertilizer can be beneficial. These plants don’t need too much fertilizer, but they can benefit from being fertilized monthly during the growing season.
So many people choose to use fertilizer for these plants. It can help the plants to grow larger and produce bigger blooms if you do things right.
Below, you’ll learn more about the process of fertilizing anthuriums. Read this advice so that you can approach the situation the right way and avoid making potentially costly mistakes.
When to Fertilize Anthuriums
It’s best to fertilize anthuriums monthly during the growing season. The growing season for these plants takes place during the spring and summer.
Spring and summer will be the time when these plants actively grow. So you should start fertilizing the plants during the early weeks of spring and stop by the time autumn arrives.
Note that not all anthuriums will need to be fertilized monthly. Some types of anthuriums will be fine being fertilized less often.
So you might want to look up specific information based on the type of anthurium that you own. Generally, anthuriums will be fine with being fertilized once monthly during the growing season.
This is especially true if you make sure to only use small amounts of fertilizer each time. You want to dilute the fertilizer to be safe and avoid fertilizing the plant too much.
Keep up with this basic fertilizing schedule, and your plants will do well. It’ll help them to stay healthy, grow a bit faster, and look their best.
What Fertilizer Is Best to Use?
The best fertilizer to use for anthuriums will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish. There are different philosophies on using fertilizers on these plants.
Some people like to go with fertilizers that have a high phosphorus content. Generally, people go with this fertilizer when they want to make the blooms bigger.
You can use liquid fertilizers that contain high amounts of phosphorus. It’s said that slow-release liquid fertilizers work best for these plants.
Another option is to go with a balanced fertilizer. Balanced fertilizers work nicely because they help your plant’s overall health.
Instead of just focusing on the blooms, it’ll also help to ensure that the rest of the plant is getting what it needs. This fertilizer is best when you want the plant to be healthy and look nice.
You can easily buy standard 10-10-10 houseplant fertilizers and get good results. It’s especially good to use this fertilizer if your plant is recovering from being ill or if it’s potted in soil that doesn’t contain enough nutrients.
Finally, some enthusiasts advocate using phosphorus-light fertilizers. These fertilizers contain high amounts of nitrogen and potassium while containing only low amounts of phosphorus.
This will help your plant to look healthy, and it’ll make the plant produce healthy blooms. The blooms won’t be as big as they would be if you used high phosphorus fertilizer, though.
Often, these fertilizers will have a 20-7-20 ratio and can be purchased at garden centers. Some say that this fertilizer is a better option than using high phosphorus fertilizer, but it comes down to your preference and how you want the blooms to look.
How to Make Homemade Fertilizer for Anthuriums
It’s always possible to simply use homemade fertilizer as well. Generally, homemade fertilizer is going to help the general health of the plant.
This will work much like using a balanced 10-10-10 houseplant fertilizer. The most common way to make homemade fertilizer for anthuriums is to simply use compost.
You can compost organic materials such as banana peels to make good fertilizer for your plants. When you have the compost ready, it’ll be simple enough to amend the soil.
The compost is mixed in with the soil to give the plant extra nutrients. This doesn’t take long to do, and it’s an effective way of helping anthuriums to thrive.
Can You Use Orchid Fertilizer on Anthuriums?
It’s common for people to use orchid fertilizer on anthuriums. Just be sure to use it as instructed and avoid giving the plant too much fertilizer at once.
Orchids and anthuriums have some similarities despite being very different plants at a glance. Often, people will pot anthuriums using an orchid potting mix.
The fertilizer that is used for orchids will work fine for anthuriums, too. So you can get good results if orchid fertilizer is all that you have.
It would be better to use the fertilizers mentioned earlier, though. You might wish to stick with 10-10-10 fertilizer or a good high phosphorus fertilizer, depending on your goals for the plant.
Orchid fertilizer will also help the plant to get essential nutrients. So it isn’t a bad fertilizer to use for anthuriums.
What Happens When You Use Too Much Fertilizer?
Using too much fertilizer is very harmful to your plants. This is true for pretty much all houseplants that you’ll care for.
You always want to err on the side of caution. When you use more fertilizer than you’re supposed to, it’ll wind up damaging your anthurium.
High salt concentrations in the soil can keep the plant from retaining moisture properly. It’ll wind up making it look as if you’ve been neglecting your plant and not watering it.
Often, the signs of using too much fertilizer will be similar to the signs of not watering the plant enough. You might see the plant take on a dried appearance, and the leaves will begin to wither.
Eventually, the stems will look withered, and you’ll see that the edges of the leaves are starting to turn brown. This is something you want to avoid.
To avoid problems like this, be sure to dilute the fertilizer as instructed and only use small amounts of it. It’ll be much safer if you exercise caution when using fertilizer on your houseplants.
Meet the Other Needs of the Plant
Be sure to meet the other needs of the plant. The plant needs to receive enough sunlight and get the right amount of water.
Fertilizing the plant helps it to grow strong, but the plant won’t remain healthy unless you’re doing everything right. Remember that anthurium plants need to receive medium to bright sunlight to bloom.
They can grow fine in low light conditions even if they grow slowly. However, it’s best to give them at least medium light when you want them to look their best.
Indirect sunlight is best to be on the safe side since direct sunlight might be too harsh. Watering these plants will be simple, but you do need to avoid watering them too much.
When watering anthuriums, you need to check the soil to ensure that it has dried out between watering sessions. The top half of the soil should be dry before watering the plant again.
Water the plant thoroughly when it needs to be watered. This means watering until water comes out of the drainage holes.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how to fertilize these plants should help immensely. You now understand the best types of fertilizer to use and when to fertilize these plants.
Be sure to use only a little bit of fertilizer and dilute it properly before moving forward. This protects the plant and keeps you from making damaging mistakes.
Growing up with a mom who filled her home (inside and out) with all sorts of plants, Lisa got her start in gardening at a young age. Living now on her own with a home and yard full of plants (including an indoor greenhouse), she shares all the gardening tips she’s gained over the years.