Bromeliads are such distinctive plants that it’s easy to assume they’ll need highly specialized fertilizer formulas. In reality, their nutritional needs are much like those of other plants. But the process of supplying those nutrients can look very different depending on the species you’re growing. Here’s our complete guide to fertilizer for Bromeliads and how to apply it.
Give your Bromeliad a dose of balanced houseplant fertilizer, diluted to ¼ or ½ normal strength, every two to four weeks during the growing season. You can apply this to the soil, mist it over the leaves, or add it to the central urn in the leaves. Make sure to change the water in the urn regularly.
That general approach will work for most indoor gardeners, but these plants come in many different varieties. Knowing how different Bromeliads prefer to be fertilized can help you avoid some common mistakes. Keep reading for a detailed guide to making sure your plant gets the nutrition it needs.
Do Bromeliads Need a Lot of Fertilizer?
It’s not usually necessary to provide very much fertilizer for Bromeliads. These plants can survive and bloom with only occasional added nutrients. Meanwhile, providing too much fertilizer can have a variety of negative consequences (as we’ll explain below).
The upshot of all this is that giving your Bromeliad too little fertilizer is almost always better than using too much. But undershooting will still cause some issues. A Bromeliad that’s not getting enough nutrients will grow more slowly than normal — and it will likely never get as big as it otherwise might. Its flowering will also be delayed and potentially reduced in intensity.
Persistent malnutrition will eventually kill your plant. This might not sound like a big deal, since Bromeliads die after flowering anyway. However, if you’re planning on propagating it, you’ll find that each successive generation of pups is smaller and sicklier unless you fertilize.
For most indoor Bromeliads, a low-strength application of fertilizer once or twice per month is the sweet spot. You should only fertilize during the spring and summer (unless you’re using grow lights). Adding nutrients when the plant has too little solar energy to grow will lead to a harmful nutrient buildup.
What’s the Best Type of Fertilizer for Bromeliads?
Synthetic houseplant fertilizers come in two basic varieties: liquid and solid. Liquid fertilizers are meant to be mixed into the water you give your plant. They may be sold as powders, but you’re supposed to dissolve it in water before applying them. Liquid fertilizers deliver a burst of nutrients in the exact chemical forms that plants can absorb and use, making them available to your Bromeliad right away.
Solid (AKA granular) fertilizers are typically small pellets that you can sprinkle onto the soil. They’ll slowly dissolve and disperse through the potting mix as you water your plant. Instead of a single big splash of nutrition, they offer a mild, steady drip.
Which is better? That depends a little on your Bromeliad and a lot on you.
Granular fertilizers have the edge when it comes to convenience. You can generally apply them once at the beginning of the growing season, then forget about fertilizer until next year. There’s also less risk of severely over-fertilizing your Bromeliad, since the nutrients are released little by little.
Not all Bromeliads can benefit equally from granular fertilizers, though. Many of these species are epiphytic in the wild, growing on the trunks and branches of trees. Some epiphytic Bromeliads use their roots mostly to hold them in place, absorbing the majority of their nutrition through their leaves.
These plants may only take in a minuscule fraction of any nutrient pellets you add to their potting mix. They’ll get more from liquid fertilizers applied to their leaves. Liquid fertilizers also allow you to adjust the dosing of your Bromeliad fertilizer with much more precision. And because they’re fast-acting, they’re better for rescuing severely malnourished plants.
What About Organic Fertilizers?
The distinction between liquid and solid fertilizers applies mainly to synthetic formulas built up from inorganic chemicals. Organic fertilizers, which are processed from dead plants and animals, fall somewhere in between. They’re often sold in liquid form, but the chemicals inside need to continue decomposing before a plant can absorb them.
Organic fertilizers include things like:
- Fish emulsion
- Bone meal
- Kelp meal
- Worm castings
- Compost
In practice, these products work more like solid fertilizers. They deliver their dose of nutrition gradually, decaying over weeks or months in the soil.
If you have a Bromeliad that gets most or all of its nutrition through its leaves, we don’t recommend organic fertilizers. Trying to provide enough nutrients without causing crown rot (see below) can be a major pain. Bromeliads with more multifunctional roots can benefit from compost or other organic fertilizers.
Recognizing Your Bromeliad’s Fertilizer Preferences
You can often tell how your plant prefers to absorb nutrition by looking at its foliage. Does it have a natural reservoir at the center at the spot where its leaves radiate out from the base?
This feature is often referred to as a tank, well, cup, or vase, and it’s generally a sign that your Bromeliad is an epiphyte. In its native habitat, water naturally pools at the center of the rosette. This helps the plant store water through dry spells and gather nutrition from detritus that falls in and decays. Bromeliads with tanks often take in very little water and fertilizer through their roots.
Leaf color can also be an important clue. If the foliage has a gray-blue or silver tinge, this generally means it’s covered with lots of trichomes. These tiny hairs play an important role in transporting nutrition and water through the leaf surface. Bromeliads with more silvery coloration usually prefer to get their fertilizer through their leaves, while emerald-green ones can benefit from nutrients in the soil.
These rules aren’t universal. For example, Air Plants (Tillandsias) don’t form tanks, but they receive just about 100% of their nutrients through their leaves. That’s true even for the ones that are more green and less gray. Meanwhile, the Aqua Bromeliad (Aechmea aquilega) is a tank-forming species that can still benefit quite a bit from fertilized soil. If you know what species you’re growing, it’s always worth looking up its specific requirements.
The Best Fertilizer Formulas For Your Bromeliad
When choosing fertilizer for Bromeliads, you’ll need to consider what’s in it as well as how your plant absorbs it. The first thing to consider is the NPK value, the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (in that order). These are the most important plant nutrients, and the NPK is often listed front and center on the bottle as a series of three numbers.
For most Bromeliads, a fertilizer with a balanced NPK formula is fine. This means all three numbers are the same 10:10:10, 15-15-15, etc. Other people prefer to use multiples of 3:1:2, such as a 9:3:6 fertilizer. This is the ratio that virtually all flowering plants use these nutrients in the wild.
For Bromeliads with very colorful foliage, such as Neoregelias, many people prefer low-nitrogen fertilizers. An excess of nitrogen can change the vivid leaves to a plain green color. You still need to supply some nitrogen to ensure healthy leaf formation, but don’t use one where the N value is higher than the others.
You should also make sure your chosen fertilizer contains all the additional micronutrients, also known as “trace elements” that plants require. Most synthetic fertilizers include all of them, but it never hurts to double-check.
How to Fertilize Your Bromeliad
You should begin giving your Bromeliad some added nutrition once the weather begins to warm up in the spring. Here’s how:
Solid Fertilizer
If you’re using granular fertilizer, your job is pretty easy. Just sprinkle some over the surface of the potting mix, and you’re done for at least a few months.
The strength of the formula is less important with granular fertilizer. In general, though, you should get good results with something like 12-12-12 or 15-15-15. If you’ve never fertilized your Bromeliad before, it might be a good idea to start with a somewhat weak formula and see if it gets the job done.
This advice applies equally to organic fertilizer, except that it may come in liquid form. In that case, you’ll need to mix it with water and soak the soil with it.
A single application of slow-acting fertilizer will often carry your Bromeliad through the rest of the year. If you’re trying to boost your plant’s growth, you could try adding some more in the early summer. Once again, we’d suggest starting with a lower-than-normal dose the first time you do this.
Liquid Fertilizer
Liquid fertilizers will need to be reapplied regularly. If your Bromeliad is growing vigorously, once per month is probably enough. If it seems like it needs a boost, you can fertilize it every 2-3 weeks.
The best time to do this is when you’re ready to water your Bromeliad. The instructions that come with your fertilizer should tell you how much to use for a given volume of water. If you’ve chosen a low-strength fertilizer — 10-10-10 or less — you can generally follow this recommendation.
For higher dosages, you may want to dilute the fertilizer more, especially if you’re still figuring out how much nutrition your Bromeliad needs. Try a ¼-strength dilution to start with, and step it up gradually if necessary. If the plant is in dim light, you may even want to go as low as ⅛-strength.
Once you’ve prepared your fertilizer blend, you have two options:
- Mist it over your Bromeliad’s leaves.
- Use it to water your plant as you normally would.
Misting will be most effective if your Bromeliad has a decent number of leaf trichomes. It may be less helpful for plants without a lot of silver-gray coloration. Mixing in fertilizer when you water your Bromeliad should work no matter what.
As summer fades into fall, start tapering off your fertilizer dose. You should stop adding nutrition entirely around the time most of the leaves outside are changing colors. Don’t fertilize at all during your plant’s winter dormancy.
Can You Put Fertilizer in Your Bromeliad’s Tank?
Many guides insist you should never put fertilizer directly into the central well in your plant’s leaves. But as we noted above, this is how many Bromeliads receive the vast majority of their nutrition when they grow in the wild. Why do so many gardeners say it won’t work indoors?
The first is that nutrient-rich water can more easily breed fungi and bacteria, increasing the risk of a deadly foliage infection known as crown rot. Rotting Bromeliads tend to die quickly, especially when the infection starts at the very center of their leaves.
The other reason is that chemical fertilizers contain high concentrations of mineral salts, much higher than the plant would get in nature. If your Bromeliad can’t use them all before the water starts to evaporate, it may develop salty deposits on the leaves. These can also damage the plant’s tissues.
The good news is that you can usually avoid these problems by diluting your fertilizer to a fairly low dose, as we suggested above. It’s also important to rinse out the tank regularly. You should be doing this anyway if you water your Bromeliad through the cup, but it’s especially crucial if you’re also adding fertilizer.
Do this once a week or every other week at most. Simply dump out the water in the tank, refill it, and repeat the process a few times. This should dissolve any residual salts and prevent the water from sitting still long enough to cause infection.
Never put fertilizer pellets or dry fertilizer powder directly into the Bromeliad’s cup. It will be much too concentrated for the plant and likely damage it.
Bromeliad Fertilizer Burn
How do you know if you’ve given your Bromeliad too much fertilizer? Sometimes you can spot this before it becomes a serious problem. Milder symptoms include:
- Loss of colors other than green
- “Leggy” growth, with unusually long, tall, and slender foliage
- Whitish crust on the leaves
A more drastic case of excessive nutrition could cause fertilizer burn. This happens when the salt concentration gets high enough to leach water away from the plant’s roots and leaves. This will cause the foliage to wilt, curl, and turn yellow and/or brown. The tips of the leaves often turn dark brown or black as water is pulled away from your Bromeliad’s extremities.
The best fix is to flush away the extra fertilizer salts. If they’re in the soil, you can accomplish this with an extra thorough watering. Use a much higher volume of water than you’d normally give the plant, pouring it slowly into the potting mix and letting it drain away. Distilled water is particularly effective for this,
If you’ve mostly been applying fertilizer to the leaves, you can rinse them off. This is basically the same process we recommended above to clean out the “vase”. In this case, though, you’re rinsing off all of the leaves at once.
Recognizing Nutrient Deficiencies in Bromeliads
When you’re not providing enough fertilizer for Bromeliads, it may not be easy to spot at first. As we mentioned up top, these plants don’t have huge nutrient needs. It can take quite a while for a shortfall to seriously affect your Bromeliad’s health.
Instead, your plant simply won’t grow very quickly. It will rarely produce new leaves, and the ones it does form will be fairly small. Flowering may also be delayed by a year or more. Instead of the lush, enormous Bromeliads you’ve seen online, you have a fairly puny plant.
Eventually, a lack of nutrition will interfere with your Bromeliad’s ability to repair damage and form new growth. New leaves may have a shriveled or twisted appearance. Discoloration is also common, especially widespread yellowing or brown spotting.
It’s vital to remember that there are many other possible causes for this kind of stunted growth besides lack of fertilizer, such as:
- Lack of sunlight
- Low humidity
- Overwatering
- Underwatering
- Overly dense potting mix
- A pot that’s too small
Try to rule out these other issues before giving your Bromeliad more fertilizer. If a lack of nutrition isn’t what’s keeping it shrimpy, adding more will only place more strain on the plant.
Once you’ve determined that your Bromeliad needs more fertilizer, raise the dosage a little at a time. Increase it by ¼ or ½ and watch what happens. If you see signs of fertilizer burn, flush the plant and return to a lower dosage.
Frequently Asked Questions
Let’s take a look at a few miscellaneous questions many people ask about fertilizing Bromeliads.
Can you use Orchid fertilizer for Bromeliads?
Answer: It depends on the fertilizer.
For the most part, labels like “Orchid fertilizer”, “Bromeliad fertilizer”, and “African Violet fertilizer” are about marketing and nothing more. Almost all plants use the same nutrients in more or less identical proportions. You can use an Orchid fertilizer for your Bromeliad, but you’ll still need to follow the advice above to choose the right one.
Since Orchids are also epiphytes, fertilizers made for them may be sold in handy spray bottles. This can make misting your Bromeliad a little easier, which is as good a reason as any to choose a particular fertilizer. Just don’t use one that’s too high in nitrogen.
Do Bromeliads like coffee grounds?
Answer: Not especially.
Coffee grounds have gained a reputation as an incredible fertilizer for houseplants, but the reality is a bit underwhelming. They only contain a small amount of nutrition, and most of that is nitrogen. You generally want to avoid nitrogen-heavy fertilizers on your Bromeliads. And, adding lots of coffee grounds to the potting mix can make it too water-retentive, risking root or crown rot.
It’s fine to occasionally sprinkle a small quantity of dried coffee grounds into the soil around your Bromeliad. Don’t expect it to work wonders, though, and never add it to the plant’s tank. If you really want to get the most out of your coffee grounds, compost them!
Are Epsom Salts good for Bromeliads?
Answer: Only if your plant is low on magnesium or sulfur.
Epsom salts contain two important micronutrients for plants: magnesium and sulfur. If your Bromeliad happens to be lacking these specific ingredients, adding some Epsom salts to the potting mix could be helpful. But it’s pretty hard to tell what nutrients a plant needs without scientific testing, and ordinary synthetic fertilizer already contains plenty of magnesium and sulfur.
Can you feed bugs to your Bromeliad?
Answer: In small amounts, this is fine.
The vast majority of Bromeliads are not carnivorous plants — they’re not adapted specifically to catch and digest insects. Still, in outdoor settings, it’s not uncommon for the occasional dead bug to tumble into their cups. You can certainly supplement your Bromeliad’s nutrition by occasionally tossing a fly or gnat into its vase.
Don’t overdo it, though. Your plant may not be able to absorb more than a little bit of nutrition from decayed insect matter. If the urn is constantly full of rotting bugs, it may develop crown rot, and it will definitely look gross. You should still flush the tank out regularly with fresh water, discarding any bugs when you do.
How do you fertilize Air Plants?
Answer: Mist or soak them in diluted fertilizer
Air Plants (members of the Tillandsia genus) are Bromeliads with fairly specialized needs. They’ve taken the epiphyte lifestyle to the extreme, using their roots purely as gripping tools. Everything the plant needs to live — air, water, sunlight, and nutrients — it absorbs through its leaves.
As such, most people water their Air Plants by soaking the leaves every couple of weeks in a water bath. Once a month, you can add a weak dose of fertilizer to this water. Misting them with diluted fertilizer also works. All of the other advice we laid out above applies to Air Plants as well as other Bromeliads.
Final Thoughts
For the most part, less fertilizer for Bromeliads is more. This doesn’t mean you should starve them of nutrients, but it does mean you should start with a low dose and increase it with caution. Because you’re often applying fertilizer directly to your plant’s leaves, the risk of damaging the plant is greater. A patient, methodical approach should pay off in the long run with a healthier and more beautiful Bromeliad.