I’m not going to waste your time trying to convince you that peace lilies love growing in water. Peace lilies don’t love anything. They crave the sweet release of death.
Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for you!) they’re actually quite bad at dying, instead looking droopy and despairing anyone so much as mentions repotting them.
Buuut they’re cheap and they’re VERY adaptive to living in different conditions, so if you fancy getting into hydroponics (or just want a sick centrepiece) peace lilies are a great candidate.
This article is only about growing peace lilies (spathiphyllum) in water. If you’re after more general peace lily advice, this is the article you need.
Do peace lilies like living in water?
No, peace lilies don’t like anything. Next question.
Jokes, jokes jokes.
Peace lilies don’t like to dry out so they do seem to do pretty well living in water.
However, when you grow a plant in water, it’ll grow specially adapted roots that can easily absorb oxygen from water (rather than the air, which is what soil roots do). So whilst peace lilies do well being grown this way, they’re no better suited to it than many other houseplants.
Why keep a peace lily in water?
Controversially, I don’t think there is any clear-cut benefit to growing in houseplants in water. It’s 100% a case of personal preference.
That being said, there are definitely advantages to keeping peace lilies hydroponically as well as, alas, some disadvantages. I’ll cover them later on.
The main reason, in my opinion, that people keep peace lilies in water is that…it looks pretty cool.
They also do INCREDIBLY well living in fish tanks – the constant supply of veeeery weak fertiliser suits them well (fish tanks *should* be filtered so there shouldn’t be much in there in the way of fish poop, but that seems to suit spathiphyllum just fine).
If you’re after a particularly lush and beautiful peace lily, procure a fishtank!
(Jokes, they’re a hell of a lot of work).
How to switch a peace lily from soil to water
There are three basic steps to transferring a peace lily from soil to water:
- Remove the soil from the roots
- Clean the roots
- Put the roots in water*
*Do not submerge the leaves. They’ll rot and die alarmingly rapidly.
You can make this as easy and complicated as you like. I’ve had 100% success rates even if I’ve just blasted the roots with te cold tap and whacked them straight in a case of water. Sometimes they fail when you painstakingly clean every root.
Peace lilies do NOT like change. I try to balance cleaning the roots with being as undisruptive as possible – if you fear for your lily’s life then you might have more success leaving the roots well alone and just making sure to change the water regularly (i.e. every day). Over time the soil will soak off and you won’t damage the roots.
How to care for a peace lily in water
Again, you can make this as easy or hard as you like.
Watering
My peace lilies are more than happy to live in (actually pretty hard) tap water. Sure, they get the odd crisp tip ut it’s hardly noticeable. They’ve lived in water for about five years.
If you want to use filtered or distilled water, that’s fine. You’ll need to use a hydroponic fertiliser anyway, so don’t worry about distilled water causing nutritional deficiencies.
Feeding
As I mentioned, you’ll need a hydroponic fertiliser – I use the General Hydroponics one, linked here. Dynagrow is also a popular option.
You need a hydroponic fertiliser because there’s little to no available nutrition in water (especially filtered or distilled) so all the micro and macro nutrients the plant needs need to be in the fertiliser.
You can either add a very diluted amount of fertiliser every time you change the water (more info on that below) OR use the normal amount of water, and, assuming you change the water weekly, add fertiliser one week of every four.
How often to change the water
it depends. I keep aquatic moss in with my Monstera so I rarely have to change the water – once a year if it’s lucky. If you don’t have anything in the water that’s producing oxygen (such as an air pump/stone) then I’d recommend changing the water at LEAST every week
Benefits of keeping peace lilies in water
Repotting
Peace lilies HATE being repotted, and can be sulky and droopy for days. The benefit of keeping them in water is that you can repot when whatever receptacle you’re using is full and it causes barely any harm to the plant. It likely won’t even notice.
There’s also no messing about with soil or dirt or fungus gnats, which is glorious.
Pest care
Mealybugs?? Soak the whole plant. Aphids? Soak the whole plant. Spider mites? Soak…you get the idea.
Not many pests will tolerate being soaked regularly, and it’s SO MUCH EASIER to thoroughly soak a plant that doesn’t have any soil.
The only pest that this won’t shift in a couple of weeks is thrips because they’re little pricks that lay their eggs INSIDE the leaf. It will work on them if you’re persistent though!
Problems with keeping peace lilies in water
Transferring them
Water can spill
Aaaand fertiliser can stain. I personally prefer to mop up water than soil (especially soggy soil) but it’s personal preference.
You have to fertilise regularly
Ok, to tell you a secret I didn’t fertilsie my hydroponic peace lily for a year and it still bloomed, so I don’t actually think fertilising super regularly is THAT big of a deal BUT you’ll get bigger, better, and more numerous flowers if you do feed it regularly.
And that’s it!
This doesn’t seem like a super involved article, BUT peace lilies do well in water. Unlike other aroids like Monstera or Philodendron they grow pretty bushy and don’t need staking. If you need more information on peace lilies, check out these articles:
