A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Is Fertilizer Necessary?

I don't fertilize my plants and they are doing good. I wondered if plants take in polution and turn that into food.I did a search and found that the spider plant does this such thing. When i did a search, i typed in spider plant facts. Very cool huh? I LOVE houseplants. Robert

i don't "fertilize" my plants but about 2 times a year, if that. some of the blooming plants will suffer, but the green foliage plants seem to be just fine.

I simply place my plants in the window and they do fine. Let the plants produce their own food from the sun. Robert

Hi Robert, when you pot your plants, do you use a good quality potting medium or do you make up your own. Quality commercial mixes usually have an amount of fert in them and depending on the other factors of growth, light, temperature, water etc, there may be enough to last many months. Just having a mulch is introducing nutrient organically. Anyway, glad your plants are doin fine. You must be doing something Wright:)

I have had some plants over a year that i haven't potted yet. I just buy house brand potting mix cause it's cheaper than national brand. Today i just bought 3 new spider plants-my favorite plant. They are hanging on my curtain rod in a west window. I guess they were on sale. Buy 2 get one free. I looked for babies on the plants and 2 of 3 have babies. So i'm really hopeing to get many plants and grow them. I'd love to have an apartment full of house plants, especially spider plants. Robert

Fertilizer is over promoted and oversold thanks to the heavy advertising by Miracle Gro and other manufacturers. In fact, plants do use nutrients, but in very minute quantities. Have you ever noticed how long cuttings, such as lucky bamboo, can live in plain water before they start to deteriorate? That demonstrates how little nutrients are needed by most plants. In fact, good quality potting mixes have plenty of nutrients to last for several years or more. There is a far greater risk of damaging a plant by over fertilizing than by not fertilizing at all.

Although plants do remove certain air pollutants, none of these pollutants contain the nutrients that plants use. The pollutants may not harm plants that absorb them, but the pollutants are not a source of nutrition for plants.