'Kitchen scrap encourages peace lily to bloom - and it's not banana peel'
In an exclusive chat with Express.co.uk, plant and gardening expert Petar Ivanov revealed the best kitchen scrap to encourage beautiful blooms on a peace lily.
A peace lily houseplant tends to have a number of beautiful white spathes in the supermarket or garden centre but, after taking it home, it's only a matter of time before the flowers brown and wilt, leaving you with green foliage.
To encourage the peace lily to rebloom throughout the year, Fantastic Gardener's gardening and plant expert, Petar Ivanov, revealed the perfect pot addition.
"Like any other plant, a peace lily can benefit from a little boost to flower," said Petar.
"Actually, one of the most common problems many people experience with this houseplant is making it flower and bloom."
Petar advised: "Feed it banana skin as a fertilising agent; this is the best kitchen scrap to make a peace lily bloom." But other kitchen scraps are just as good.
He added: "There are also some other [kitchen scraps] you can replace [banana] with."
Petar explained: "The key is for the ingredient to be potassium-rich, which is the nutrient that encourages flowering.
"Eggshells are an excellent replacement for banana skin water because they’ll also enrich the plant’s soil with calcium, which is an essential nutrient for plant growth."
Petar added: "You can also add coffee grounds instead, which contain nitrogen and phosphorus that also benefit healthy plant growth.
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"However, this will be a bit more time-consuming because coffee grounds should ideally be added to compost first so they can break down before applying them to the plant’s soil."
Any of these kitchen scraps – banana, egg shells, or coffee grounds – should only be applied during the peace lily's active growing period; this is usually during spring and summer.
"Do it once a month," Petar recommended, adding that the growing period is between March to August.
"Consider also alternating between the kitchen scraps so the peace lily can get each one of the beneficial nutrients," he added.
"Keep in mind also that these types of homemade fertilisers are usually a lot more gentle on plants than commercial ones so you can apply them with a bit more freedom."
While the kitchen scraps are effective fertilisers, they are not useful all year round.
The reason these kitchen scraps are useless during winter is because that's when the peace lily's growth season is dormant.
During the colder months, a peace lily "needs to rest", said Petar.
