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Using natural fertilizer for your houseplants keeps chemical fertilizers from negatively affecting plants and the environment around them, and encourages organic gardening, which is good for people and the planet. And taking waste that would otherwise go into landfills and using it to help plants grow may be the purest form of recycling.

How to use organic fertilizers

Chemical fertilizers have been found to make plants grow faster at first, but it then puts them into a cycle—nutrients are stripped from the soil structure, which makes the plants need more and more fertilizer, and eventually the soil and the plants are unhealthy. Organic fertilizers are what nature uses to grow healthy plants.

There are a number of options available today, from materials you can find around your house to a range of products you can buy that are both 100 percent natural and effective.

1. Recycle your coffee grounds.
2. If you have a fish tank or bowl, redirect the water from it to your plants when you change it. This is great for plants: Fish material is the essence of a lot of fertilizers, and the plants get watered at the same time.
3. If you burn incense in your home, let the ashes cool down and put them on the soil of the plants.
4. You can make your own compost with materials as diverse as grass clippings from your lawn and leftover food that can be fed to worms who then produce a great fertilizer with their waste. See the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) compost page for how to undertake this. You can make a compost “tea” with fertilizer, adding it to a large quantity of water that is then used to water the plants or spray their leaves. You can also mix the fertilizer right into the soil when you’re potting or re-potting plants; with compost in the soil, plants require less water.
5. If you don’t have an outdoor garden and don’t want to make your own compost just for houseplants, there are highly recommended natural fertilizers you can buy. Although organic fertilizers can cost as much as four times that of chemical ones, you’ll use much less because your plants won’t become “addicted,” but instead will become healthy and build on that.

Find it! Natural fertilizer tools and products

Using natural fertilizer for your houseplants helps you go green because...

• It helps keep chemical fertilizers from damaging the environment.
• It uses waste that would otherwise go into landfills for growing plants.
• It advances organic gardening, even on a small scale.

Additional benefits

• Organic fertilizers are safe for pets; chemical ones can be dangerous if pets get into plants.
• Using organic fertilizers to grow produce or herbs from your houseplants makes them healthier and more nutritious.
• Organic fertilizers can help prevent disease in plants, and cause them to require less water and less re-potting.

The overall problem

The US spends more than $5 billion a year on fossil-fuel-derived (coal or natural gas) fertilizers that leak chemicals into the ground and accelerate the release of nitrous oxide—a greenhouse gas. [1] Toxic chemicals are contaminating groundwater on every inhabited continent, endangering valuable supplies of freshwater, according to a Worldwatch Institute paper, "Deep Trouble: The Hidden Threat of Groundwater Pollution." The paper also states that several water utilities in Germany now pay farmers to switch to organic operations because it costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies. [2]

How this action affects the overall problem

Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent of the US municipal solid waste stream; when this goes to compost piles rather than landfills, waste is turned into a valuable resource. [3]

External links

• PlanTea, Inc. - Why organic fertilizers and organic gardening are darn good ideas
• Organic Gardening Magazine - Organic Houseplant Care
• Compost Guide
• Clean Air Gardening - Put Your Garbage To Work