Spathiphyllum, commonly referred to as the Peace Lily, is a well-loved houseplant known for its air-purifying qualities and ease of cultivation. To ensure the optimal health of your Peace Lily indoors, it’s crucial to provide the right soil mix.
When creating a soil mix for Peace Lily plants, several factors should be taken into account. This article will explore these considerations and present three different soil recipes suitable for Peace Lilies. If you want to use your peace lilies as air purifiers then check out my recent article Peace Lily Air Purifier ( True Or False? ).
What Kind Of Soil Do Peace Lilies Need?
The soil you choose for your Peace Lily is essential for its overall health. Just like water and light, soil quality plays a crucial role in how well your plant thrives. When selecting the right soil mix for your Peace Lily, you need to consider several factors:
Moisture Retention: The soil should hold enough moisture to keep the plant hydrated but not become waterlogged.
Drainage Capacity: Proper drainage is crucial to prevent root rot and ensure the plant’s roots have enough oxygen.
Soil pH: Peace Lilies prefer slightly acidic to neutral soil with a pH range of 6.0 to 7.0.
Aeration: The soil mix should allow for good aeration, ensuring the roots receive the oxygen they need.
Nutrient Content: It should provide essential nutrients for healthy growth without causing nutrient imbalances.
These factors are essential for creating the right soil mix to keep your Peace Lily thriving in an indoor environment.
The Soil Should Be Able To Retain Moisture
Peace Lilies thrive when their soil is consistently moist. As long as the roots have a steady supply of water, your Peace Lilies will remain healthy, allowing them to produce their beautiful white flowers and maintain their glossy leaves. However, it’s important to exercise caution as excessive moisture can lead to soggy soil, resulting in browning leaves. If you want to know how to care for your peace lilies during the winter then check out my recent article Peace Lily Winter Care ( In 7 Easy Steps ).
Drainage
Peace lilies thrive in well-draining soil that is consistently moist. When watering your peace lily, let excess water drain out through the pot’s drainage holes. It’s best to wait until the top layer of soil has dried out before watering again. This ensures that the soil remains moist but not waterlogged.
Ensuring proper drainage in your Peace Lily’s growing medium is crucial to prevent overwatering, which is especially important for recently propagated plants. When excess water accumulates in the soil, it can lead to root saturation and rapid root rot, severely hindering the plant’s growth, causing stunted foliage, and affecting its ability to bloom.
However, when the soil promotes adequate drainage, these issues can be avoided. Although houseplant potting mixes are nutrient-rich, they can be dense on their own. To create a suitable growing medium for Peace Lilies, consider incorporating drainage-enhancing materials like coconut coir, perlite, or coarse sand. If your peace lily is overgrown then check out my recent article Overgrown Peace Lily ( 6 Step Fix ).
Soil PH
Peace lilies thrive in soil with a slightly acidic pH level. Keeping the soil pH within the range of 5.5 to 6.5 ensures that the root system can access and absorb essential nutrients, promoting healthy growth and vibrant foliage.
Soil Aeration
Prior to watering the soil, it’s essential to periodically aerate it by gently stirring. This helps facilitate air circulation within the soil, improving water distribution and ensuring consistent soil moisture levels. Aerate your peace lily’s soil easily by using a chopstick to create some holes in the soil, then proceed to water it. Allow the water to fully drain out afterward. This simple method helps maintain proper soil aeration.
Soil Nutrients
For optimal growth, Spathiphyllum thrives in nutrient-rich soil. This plant flourishes in soil that is abundant in phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. Therefore, an ideal soil mixture for your peace lilies should incorporate these essential nutrients. Additionally, consider adding fertilizer or homemade compost to further enrich your soil mix for peace lilies.
DIY Peace Lily Soil Mix For Beginners
Peace lilies thrive in soil that is rich in nutrients, retains moisture well, and has good drainage. To meet the needs of Spathiphyllum, you can select a lightweight potting mix that includes perlite or pumice and incorporate a small amount of compost. It’s best to avoid garden soil, as peace lilies prefer lighter soil and can be sensitive to heavy soils.
Maintain the soil pH for peace lilies in the range of 5.6 to 6.5, as they thrive in slightly acidic conditions. To enhance soil acidity, consider incorporating peat moss. If your pH meter registers a reading lower than 5.6, you can use lime to reduce the acidity.
To make a good Peace Lily soil, combine equal parts of peat moss, loam, and sand in a container. Sand improves drainage, loam retains moisture, and peat moss enhances aeration in the peace lily soil mix, providing a well-balanced environment for the plant.
DIY Peace Lily Soil Mix For Experienced Gardeners
Creating the perfect potting mix for your Peace Lily can range from a simple and convenient blend to a mixture of premium ingredients. The key is to combine elements that offer nutrition with those that promote proper drainage, ensuring your Peace Lily’s optimal growth.
In the following section, we will outline the essential components of an excellent potting mix and provide a recipe for your convenience.
- Potting Soil: This forms the foundation of your potting medium. Opt for a lightweight, well-aerated soil rich in organic and aged natural matter.
- Horticultural Sand: Typically, this coarse “sand” consists of crushed stones like quartz, granite, or sandstone.
- Sphagnum Peat Moss: With fine particles and a coarse texture, peat moss excels at retaining water and nutrients while maintaining good aeration.
- Coco Coir: Derived from coconut husks, coco coir has a texture similar to peat moss but compacts slightly more over time.
- Pine Bark Fines: These are small pieces of coniferous tree bark, such as firs, pines, and spruces. They contain a high percentage of lignin, preventing compaction and creating air pockets.
- Perlite: Perlite is an expanded rock material that resembles Styrofoam. It doesn’t absorb water, making it excellent for providing aeration and drainage in your soil mix.
The potting soil for your Peace Lily, is essential to balance aeration, drainage, and water retention. A suitable mix includes:
- 2 parts cactus or houseplant potting soil mix
- 2 parts coarse horticultural sand
- 1 part of your choice: coconut coir, orchid bark, or perlite
Combine two parts of cactus or houseplant soil mix, which provides essential nutrition for your Peace Lily, with two parts of coarse sand to enhance drainage. Lastly, incorporate one part of coconut coir, orchid bark, or perlite to further improve drainage and airflow. No need to add water to the mix, but be sure to water your plant after repotting.
Cactus soil is a suitable choice for your Peace Lily, and if you desire, you can incorporate a small amount of compost to enhance its nutritional content.
Furthermore, it’s important to be aware that Peace Lily plants are considered toxic to both humans and pets. Therefore, it’s advisable to wear gloves when handling these plants.
Cactus Soil For Peace Lilies
These succulent blends present a different challenge. A typical cactus mix tends to drain water very quickly, potentially leaving your Peace Lily’s roots lacking moisture. To maintain its well-being, you’d need to water the plant almost daily during the summer.
However, a blend consisting of 60% cactus soil, 30% cocopeat, and 10% vermicompost could provide a suitable solution. This mixture strikes a balance between drainage and moisture retention, offering an environment in which your Peace Lily should thrive.
Orchid Soil For Peace Lilies
When considering a store-bought mix, opt for an orchid blend, which is a more suitable choice. Although it might still lean towards being slightly dry for a Peace Lily, you can manage it effectively. Regularly monitor the soil’s moisture level to determine when your plant requires watering. To be on the safe side, you can add a bit of coir and compost to enhance moisture retention.
Potting Soil Or Potting Mix For Peace Lilies?
The term soil carries different connotations when discussing indoor and outdoor plants. Outdoor garden soil serves as both a growth medium for plants and a thriving ecosystem, teeming with insects, bacteria, and fungi. Its physical composition includes a mixture of decomposing organic matter and fine mineral particles such as sand or clay.
While garden soil supports plant growth effectively in an outdoor garden, it becomes too compact when placed in an 8-inch diameter pot, making it unsuitable for the root systems of most indoor houseplants. Therefore, most potting soil, often referred to as potting mix, contains no actual soil; instead, it consists of lighter components like peat moss and perlite.
Store-Bought Soil For Peace Lilies
What if you prefer not to invest the time in creating potting soil from the ground up? Can’t you simply purchase some from the local garden center?
Well, you can, but you must exercise caution. As mentioned earlier, natural soil is overly compact for a potted Peace Lily. Regrettably, this is also the case with many commercial potting mixes available in stores. Conventional store-bought potting soil often comprises a significant amount of peat moss, which is a highly dense and absorbent material.
This quality is beneficial for plants that require more time between watering, as it can help save a neglected plant by retaining moisture for extended periods. However, if you water your plant regularly, peat-based mixes can retain excessive moisture for extended periods, which may not be ideal.
This can pose a problem for plants like Peace Lilies, which naturally grow in the loose, airy layers of decaying leaves and branches on the rainforest floor. This environment is significantly less compact than your typical peat-heavy potting mix.
If you’ve already purchased off-the-shelf potting soil and don’t want it to go to waste, you can modify it for your Peace Lily by incorporating coarser ingredients. We recommend replacing at least half of the mix’s volume with equal parts perlite and orchid bark.
Alternatively, you can explore specialty mixes designed for aroids, the plant family to which Peace Lilies belong. While these mixes may be on the expensive side, they can be long-lasting due to their inclusion of ample woody material and inorganic components.
Signs That You Are Using The Wrong Kind Of Soil For Your Peace Lilies
Being native to jungles, Peace Lilies require well-draining soil to manage abundant water effectively. Additionally, the growing medium should facilitate aeration, allowing the roots to access oxygen.
If the soil is excessively compact, it retains too much water, obstructing airflow around the roots, essentially suffocating them and jeopardizing the plant’s health. Signs of overwatering in your Peace Lily include brown tips on foliage, drooping leaves (which can also be a symptom of underwatering, so check the soil’s moisture), rotting roots, yellowing Peace Lily foliage (which may require pruning), and wilting Peace Lily leaves.
Pots For Peace Lilies
Selecting the appropriate type of pot is essential for creating an optimal soil environment for your Peace Lily. Various pot materials possess distinct characteristics related to moisture retention. Plastic nursery pots are a great choice as they maintain adequate soil humidity.
However, it’s important to ensure that these pots have drainage holes to allow excess water to escape. On the other hand, ceramic and terracotta pots may not be as effective, as they can allow excessive moisture to evaporate.
Repotting Peace Lily
Regardless of how well you’ve selected your Peace Lily’s pot and soil, it’s essential to replace them periodically. As your plant grows, its roots will gradually fill the available space, becoming densely packed. This can impede their access to water and nutrients, causing your Peace Lily to suffer.
To prevent this, transplant your Spathiphyllum into a larger pot every 2-3 years. A moderate increase in size, typically around 2 inches larger in diameter, should suffice. Going too large can increase the risk of overwatering, as more soil takes longer to dry out.
Repotting also allows you to rejuvenate the soil. Even durable materials like coconut coir and pine bark break down over time. As they deteriorate, the potting mix becomes finer and less aerated. When repotting, always provide your Peace Lily with fresh potting soil.
To transplant your Peace Lily, start by gently tipping the pot upside down while securely holding the plant’s base. Next, use your fingers to remove any clumps of soil clinging to the roots.
If your plant has been in the same pot for several years, it’s likely to be root-bound, meaning the root system is tightly packed into a mass that matches the shape and size of its container. Before placing your Peace Lily in its new pot, carefully separate and tease apart the roots with your fingers.
Lightly moisten your potting soil until it reaches a dampness similar to that of a wrung-out washcloth. Then, fill it around your Peace Lily’s roots. Give the pot a few taps and gentle shakes to help the soil settle into place, but avoid compacting it.