There's a trick to watering and fertilizing flowers with rice water, making care easy all year round

Many friends have heard that watering flowers with rice water is very good, and every time they cook rice they pour the leftover rice water into the flower pots. But before long they find that their plants not only fail to grow well, but even suffer root rot, yellow leaves and death. This is because they have not mastered the correct method of watering flowers with rice water. Below, let's take a look together with "Future Home Decoration Network" at the correct method of watering flowers with rice water.

1. Can rice water be used to water flowers?

Rice water is rich in phosphorus, nitrogen and trace elements, all of which are nutrients that flowers need to grow. After fermentation, rice water is an even more precious organic fertilizer. Organic fertilizer needs to go through decomposition and fermentation before its nutrients can be absorbed by plants.

2. Points to note

Rice water must be fully fermented before it can be used to water flowers. If fresh rice water is poured into a flower pot, it will ferment in the pot and produce heat, which burns the plant's roots. In addition, using unfermented rice water to water flowers over a long period will gradually make the potting soil hard and compacted, which hinders the plant's root respiration and causes the plant to die.

3. How to ferment rice water

First pour the rice water into a plastic bottle and put the cap on (do not screw the cap too tight, so that the gas produced during fermentation does not burst the bottle), then leave it in the sun for about a week. The fermentation time may vary depending on the temperature. Watch the bottom of the bottle: if the white sediment at the bottom is gone and the water has turned yellow or yellowish-black, it is ready. To prevent the rice water from producing a foul smell during fermentation, you can add chopped pomelo peel, tangerine peel, orange peel, etc.

4. Correct use

Fully fermented rice water is weakly acidic. Dilute it with about five times its volume of tap water before watering flowers, and it can improve alkaline soil. After watering flowers with diluted rice water, fertilize the plants lightly and sparingly, so as to avoid making the soil too acidic, which is not good for plant growth.

5. Suitable plants

Fermented rice water is rich in trace elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, magnesium, copper, zinc and molybdenum, and is a pollution-free, non-toxic, nutritionally complete compound fertilizer. It can be used to water jasmine, azalea, Aglaia odorata, camellia, pothos, peace lily, money tree and so on, promoting robust plant growth, lush foliage, more and brighter flowers, a longer flowering period, and preventing chlorosis.

6. Plants it should not be used on

For plants that prefer neutral or alkaline soil, rice water must not be used, such as cactus, golden barrel cactus, maidenhair fern, hyacinth, hibiscus and so on.