Hi All, I have two Peace Lilies for which I use the same compost, same fertilizer and same watering habits, and they are both in same lighting and temperature conditions. Yet, one of them is quite healthy with dark green firm leaves, and the other is not healthy at all: A week ago I noticed the leaves wilting and having yellow tips, so I checked this forum and found an advice in a similar case saying that I should take it out of the soil and wash it. I did that and left it in water only for a while and it responded quickly and got better. I returned it to the pot, with the same compost, and now the leaves are wilting again. I washed it again, and this time I noticed something on the roots; there are things like little white stones that just break if you squeeze them, as if they are pieces of salt or something like that. I don't know what they are, so I thought I should ask in case these are the cause of what's happening to the plant. Thank you all for your help in advance.
Hello photopro, Not very frequently, I fertilize them every ten days, and do that for the two peace lilies together, yet one is healthy and the other isn't. I am also worried about these little white stones. Any idea what they might be? thanks
Fertilizers contains salts. I don't quite understand why one appears to have the salts and one does not. A Peach Lily is an aroid. Aroids as a group do not like very much fertilizer. Your Peach Lily is almost certainly a hybrid, and very likely a clone. Almost all grown in the US today are created in a lab, they are not grown from seeds. The tissue culture company that created it simply piece of a leaf blade and grew tissue in a test tube (a bunch of it) and then grew thousands of plants that are literally copies of the original. You've heard people scream about the dangers of cloning? Well, it is done all the time in plants. And there is nothing wrong with doing it in plants! The original was very likely a hybridized plant. It looks little like anything that grows naturally in the wild. Hybridizers have tried to change the plant in order to make it easy to grow in a home. They try for bigger blades, or smaller blades, or bigger spathes, or smaller spathes, or a combination. But whatever they create, it just isn't the plant that lives in the wild any more. In the wild, there are many species. Most live on the fringes of rain forests. As a result, they don't like as much water as true rain forest species. As a group, since they were "designed" to live in a home they need much less water than most people offer. And they need very little fertilizer. These are most easily killed by too much water, or no water all all. Too much fertilizer, and too much light. The hybridized versions have been "created" to exist in the low light conditions of your living room and do quite nicely in low light. The "flower" is not a "flower" but an inflorescence. An inflorescence contains two parts, the external portion is known to science as the spathe and the center portion, the spike portion, is the spadix. The actual flowers form along the spadix and are quite tiny. Now, what can you do? My suggestion is to plant them in extremely fast draining soil. Typical grocery store soil mixtures do not work well for this plant. You can mix your own by starting with Miracle Grow Moisture Control mix and adding another larger portion of peat to the mix. Also mix in a good quantity of Perlite™ and many aroid growers add a good orchid mix such as Schultz orchid mix since it has charcoal to sweeten the soil. The mixture should be approximately 50% Miracle Grow, 20% Perlite™. 20% peat, 10% orchid mix. Keep this mix damp, not soggy wet. And it is acceptable to allow it to dry out a bit between watering. I water the one's in my office (I don't grow them in the atrium because out there they receive too much water) about once a week, perhaps twice if the soil begins to dry. When you fertilize use a dilute mix. Don't use it straight out of the bottle. Many aroid growers recommend "fertilize weakly, weekly". By "weakly", I use about 20% of the manufacturers recommended dose. Are the "stones" excess fertilizer? I can't tell you without seeing it and perhaps not then. But it sure sounds like fertilizer build up. If one is doing fine, I'd leave it alone. But repot the one that is not doing well. And I'm not certain about the advice to soak the plant in water. As I stated earlier, this aroid is not fond of large volumes of water. Good growing!
Thank you photopro. This is very helpful. I will follow your advice and see how it gows. I've left it in water since last night, and it looks better now after I washed the white stones off the roots. Thanks a lot
