Dixana
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Organic miracle grow?

I talked to my mom last night again, after many discussions the last couple weeks on me wanting to be organic/chemical free and how my stepdad uses chemicals on everything from he yard to the plants and flowers at their house. (though they refuse to let the city spray their trees for gypsy moths and do that the old school way with burlap, a stick, and soapy water)
ANYWAY I guess they went to Menards and she picked me up a few bags of organic Miracle Grow....
Has anyone else seen this? I can't help but be a little skeptical...
I'm not going to be rude to my mom and will happily take the soil bought for me, but Miracle Grow? Organic? To me those two things don't go together....
And I did try to look online but the few sites I found are sooooo slow to load on my smart phone (THANK YOU Mr. Webmaster for making a nice site NOT loaded with ads!!!! There are not many others))

The Helpful Gardener
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Need more info Dixana; the potting soil? Organic fertililzer?

Check the bag for an assay (three numbers together, like 1-1-1 or 10-5-2) and a list of ingredients, or get me the product name in full...

HG

Dixana
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I don't have em yet, my mom lives a little over an hour north of us so it will be a week or so before we make a trip up there.

Dillbert
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from the web site:

https://www.scotts.com/smg/catalog/productTemplate.jsp?proId=prod70226&itemId=cat50106&tabs=usage

DoubleDogFarm
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I guess it's on how you look at it. Do you buy organic products from a chemical company like Scotts. If we only buy their organic line will they change. Probably not. Maybe it takes running out of oil to change things.

Going organic, IMO, is not only growing with organic techniques, but supporting organic farmers, companys etc. Some politics are involved. Maybe religion. I don't buy Krafts foods, Exxon gas and others.

and I second the the praise of this forum. :!: :D :D

The Helpful Gardener
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From a strictly scientific basis, they are basing this on chicken poop, so is it technically organic? Yes.

But chicken manure is about as high in water soluble ammonia as an organic fert can be, some 20 to 40% soluble in water, so we still have the water pollution issues, but at least we are eliminating some of the solubility and all the poison Scott's usually packs into their other lawn ferts...

HG

cynthia_h
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Here's a discussion from last June on the subject of "organic" Miracle Gro:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=75963

Not the heaven-sent, 100% pure stuff their marketing department would love all of us to believe. Maybe a little bit better than their usual stuff, but...

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

The Helpful Gardener
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Finding true green fertilizers is hard; there are so few really plant based, true organic fertilizers out there...

There is a place for chicken poop in the organic regimen; it is a great bridge product for chemical landscapes transitioning to organics, where compromised soil biologies do not produce enough nutrition. But the eventual sweet spot we are aiming for is the need for little or no fertilizers at all.

While I know this is not a generally recognized practice (I had a long drawn out explanation/conversation/argument with an honest to god scientist about this a few weeks back; he kept asking, "But where does the nitrogen come from?" :roll: ), soils are self supporting. We have acres and acres and acres of all sorts of natural landscape to support this "theory", yet people seem oblivious to the possibility...

HG

garden5
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I saw that, too, and I can't help but be a little skeptical. If the same company that is making synthetic fertilizers is making this, I find it hard to believe that they would make it totally free from any chemicals, yet still put the "Miracle Grow" brand on it.

It's for this reason that I'm starting all of my seeds in my own dirt (which has a little bit of compost in it) this year. I've a little more fine-tuning to do with the mixture, but once I get the structure down-pat, it'll be all good.

The Helpful Gardener
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Cynthia, fogot to thank you for your inclusion of an older thread on the same topic. Seems even HG should use the Search function more often. Fogot all about that one, but I agree with what I said completely :lol: .

Using fish hydrolysate and kelp with some alfalfa hads done me just fine for three or four years here and I see little need to change my fertilization practices now. I got tomatoes last year when many did not, had great crops of everything the voles and squash bugs left me (planting nasturtiums with the squash this year as I hear the squash bugs don't like it), and I can fine tune between them all for each plant.

Plus Scott's/MG is just greenwashing with this product; they are the entity most responsible for every dead zone springing up around our shores, as they are far and away the biggest peddler of water soluble nitrogen. I won't support any company doing that much damage...

But it IS organic, Dix. WAY better than the chems...

HG

britzplc
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I am using Miracle Gro organic soil in my garden. There are few soils that are truly organic so it really doesn't bother me. I don't know if there will be a true difference in the way the plants will grow, I just planted all the seeds the other day. If you are skeptical about organics just try keeping it contained in pots or something so there isn't a big runoff problem when it rains, thus not causing much pollution...I think, lol :D

The Helpful Gardener
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So no drainage in your container? How will that work?

The problem here is like the problem with trash...

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Throw it away."

"Where's away?"

Where indeed? :?

This pollution is killing our coastal marine environments and despite complete awareness of the problem and the sourcing, virtually nothing has been done to stop this issue. Pretending there is an "away" where these issues will dissappear to is being daily disproven in the Gulf Of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, the salmon raising areas off of Washington and Oregon, and in my own Long Island Sound. Not to mention hundreds of other areas around the planet.

These coastal areas are the nurseries for the marine food chains we sit at the top of; crab, lobster, shellfish and many of our favorite food fish are all imperiled by this continued dumping. People's livelihood, our shared ecosystem, the simple ability to go to the beach is being damaged and for what? Becasue we can't adjust to the idea of compost?

Until we address this matter in a meaningful way, until nitrogen pollution is taken as seriously as mercury or PCBs, we will dgrade our coastal and marine environs until one day, probably soon, they will simply collapse. The lobster haul was way down in the Sound this past year; the only non-migratory population of lobster on the planet. The Dead Zone reached the Connecticut River last year as well, hadn't made it that far ever before.

Plant based organics that support biology that feeds soil does not pollute water. Biology stays put, even makes its own glue to make sure it does. Want to be sure you don't pollute water? GO REALLY organic...

HG

garden5
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Wow, that was a really insightful post, HG. I guess you are saying that the MG Organic potting soil does not have all the chemicals that standard ferts have, but it still has some?

The Helpful Gardener
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Nope, no chems, just a rather poor coice of chicken manure, which is high in water soluble urea. All organic fertilizers are NOT created equal...

HG

Gerrie
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What should we do with the manure from our three chickens? (used to be four but we forgot to close them in one night...) I usually put the cedar shreds with the manure mixed in, into the compost pile and let it decompose for at least a yr. before putting into the veggie garden. I know I've read somewhere that it's better to compost it by itself and I was thinking of starting a pile for that, but if it isn't good for the garden or isn't 'organic', what do I do with it? Can't throw it 'away'.

The Helpful Gardener
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As you are composting it you are mixing it with carbons (cedar chips, etc.) and therefore making it available to biology that will lock it up as protein. That's the best possible outcome and on the scale you are talking about, good practice. Fukuoka-sensei used a little chicken manure on his fields along with straw. Don't fret Gerrie; you are getting it exactly right...

Commercial composting like they are doing doesn't do the nice job of mixing in the other bits and leaves a lot of gassed off nitrogen and a lot of free urea to dissolve into water. Just not the same thing. It's really a matter of scale...

HG

The Helpful Gardener
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It will fire up a compost heap really well Gerrie. Add lots of carbon (paper, wood scraps, twigs and leaves of trees, sawdust or shavings) and you will have a really great fertilizer in a year. All the carbon will help bind it so it gets used, and doesn't end up in the water table...

HG



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