Miracle Grow Garden Soil works FANTASTIC for my neighbor, and I am Surprised.

[St. Phatty]

This is the cheap potting soil that they add about 8 different chemical fertilizers to. $5 for a cubic foot bag. The rest of it looks like Peat and/or Bark Fines.


My neighbor is a highly experienced outdoor grower, from his younger days, not now.

But what blows me away is HOW FVCKING HEALTHY his plants are.

He's growing some Candyland x Apollo 11 crosses, 4 of them. He gave me 2 extra plants that he had (same genetics). I planted them in organic compost. They seemed to stall. While my neighbor's plants were reaching for the stars.



I confess that I am now thinking about using Miracle Grow Garden Soil, which seems really wierd.

It's giving me a serious case of "OMGWTF".
I thought Miracle Grow was the bottom of the barrel.


Along the lines of "Do What Works", I transplanted the 2 plants from 1 gallon pots with good organic soil (or so I thought), to 3 gallon pots with Miracle Grow Garden Soil.

I guess it's sort of like hydroponics, with bark fines & peat as the growing medium, and those 8 chemical fertilizer for nutes.


As far as understanding why the Miracle Grow is working better -
* When Cannabis is in Veg., it likes Nitrogen. The ingredients list of the Miracle Grow is ammonium nitrate, and maybe 2 other nitrogen fertilizers. It must have the right amount, but not too much ?
* I need to buy some diagnostic gear, so that I am in better control of pH and PPM.

One of the local grow shop guys let me use his Hanna. The run-off for the organic soil was about 5.8 pH.

I think I'm getting something along the lines of nutrient lock-out, because of the pH running acidic.

(But if I ever need some pH 5.8 organic nutes for rockwool - I'm ready. )


I have heard that Miracle Grow fertilizer is full of "Bad Shit", with toxic impurities mixed in.

As far as 'what to do', I am wondering if I should mix the organic soil with perlite and/or sand, to dilute it a little bit.

And, to add some lime, maybe 1/4 cup for 6 gallons worth of soil ?

Anyway, I thought I would ask the Brain Trust at ICMag

 

[Mikell]

I think it's the feed people complain about the most, re: no calcium, magnesium or sulphur if I recall. Not sure what their potting soil is made of but it takes work to go wrong.

 

[OGEvilgenius]

Transplanting a chemically fed plant into an organic mix the plant will generally stall a bit. It needs to rethink how it's operating completely.

I wouldn't switch. Nothing they are doing is sustainable. You can have amazing results using just about any medium and nutrient setup if you know what you're doing.

 

[amanda88]

Miracle Grow by Scotts was famous with my crowd until someone mentioned it comes from MONSATO, that kind of put a damper on things for a while, but best to know that from the outset...?

 

[lotus710]

my dad uses is all the time. works wonders. but then it taste like grocery store veggies not the beautiful localy grown ones you get around town

 

[stoned-trout]

I have used it in a pinch many times...yeehaw.. their perlite with ferts is actually kick ass.. the amount of ferts is small but seems to help clones get going...miracle blow is great for veg but using it in flower leaves something to be desired in end product...I am mostly organic haven't used any ferts from them in like 15 years..just whatever was in their mixes..

 

[LifeLess]

Used to be all i could get here. I used it for many years.. At the end it needs a serious rinse.

 

[Granger2]

Haven't you fed your plants in the organic soil? Use organic nutes, then maybe you could make a valid comparison. -granger

 

[St. Phatty]

Haven't you fed your plants in the organic soil? Use organic nutes, then maybe you could make a valid comparison. -granger

They get fed all the time, unless I create a situation with nutrient lockout.

The first time I looked at the chemical analysis for the compost, I felt like I was looking at a General Hydroponics bottle. Lots of Nitrogen, more Potassium and Phosphorus.

Actually, the compost that is killing my seedlings is the same compost that inspired me to go from rockwool hydro to organic soil in 2008.

Then I moved to a location with a well instead of city water, so, a different pH situation. That's where I'm having a problem with seedlings sprouted in the exact same compost that easily sprouted seeds for 5 years.

Without changing my sprouting methods, with the same soil - something doesn't like something.


This is my guess - I need to hold off on full-strength feeding until the plant is about a month old. Then pour it on and give it full strength compost.


For the lime I was thinking, to start out with a 1/4 cup per 10 gallons of soil ?


Anyway, my sprout method has evolved to -
* sprout in peat pots
* transplant to Miracle Grow
* transplant to fuller strength organic @ 1 month

- - -

New soil, has not been tested, but it's what I got to transplant into -

For the fuller strength organic, I use about -

2 gallons sandy loam from one part of the front yard (actually, it's part sand, part dirt)

4 gallons downright good dirt from another part of the front yard - just basically, when I am working in the garden and notice an area with a lot of weeds, not too many rocks, lots of earthworms, etc.

4 gallons compost created by composting yard waste, hopefully with some good plant nutrients added.

And then add -
* 1 gallon Do it Yourself earthworm castings (I started a pile about 3 years ago, after butchering a cow. It's definitely not a vegan earthworm pile.)
* Bone Meal, 12 ounces, by "feel". Man, that bone meal has nasty dust !
* IF I get the cash, some 1-10-1 bat guano.


So, I sort of switched gears there. The last few batches of compost I got came from a facility that took in a lot of duck poop and ground up chickens from nearby poultry operations. Dang, I guess it's hard to get vegan compost !

Where I live now, it's just yard waste compost. So it's a very different animal. I'll see how it goes.


I looked up about Monsanto and Miracle Grow. They're 2 different companies, and they have a business relationship, when you do a web search.

 

[JohnKimble]

Miracle grow soil has these little beads in them that are filled with chemical nutrients. I'm not sure what to think of it, seems like it would be hard to control what your plant is getting. Say you go into flower and those beads are still sitting around giving your plant nitrogen when you need to curtail that back. Not a good thing.

 

[stoned-trout]

^^^^^in real world situation with a decent veg time and mostly p and k flower ferts the end results were good enough where no one ever said anything about end product...yeehaw...a good grower can make it work with what they got and some smarts..i don't recommend miracle grow soil but sometimes you have to go down that dark road and make it work for ya..I just had a bag of some local redneck soil kill my clones and give me bugs,,some miracle grow soil is looking good to me now..ha ha..thank my lucky stars my eggs are in several baskets...

 

[Budley Doright]

The problem with this stuff is that you cant control the nitrogen....

you may want to flower....and its still releasing lots of N...

 

[stoned-trout]

real world experience says if you use a no n fert for flower you will end up with acceptable end product...been there done it a few times....yeehaw...