Marcy

Could someone tell me why Miracle Grow brands are said to be junk for growing? Or point me to a thread that tells why? Thanks!

mr. hyde

i once got a bag of miracel gro soil that had mold in it and was really gross totally couldnt use it yuck. but there soil isnt that bad exept for the forest products like twigs and bark and junk in it. i prefer just spagnum peat moss, perlite over all that forest product stuff. but i assume you are speaking of the ferts not the soil. ok well . the ferts aren't bad. thats why you couldnt find a thread on it however,serious gardeners dont like the fact that they contain large quantities of urea nitrogen. their soil does not contain urea but the ferts do, kinda weird but true. lots of people burn their plants with miracle gro too because well i dont know why (probably cause they're newbies i'm guessing) and it is cheap and available to all. so the urea nitrogen is why it is bad. urea supposedly doesnt flush well, which that could maybe cause the overferting but not necessarily. u can use miracle gro/ i still use their african violet soil sometimes but i have stopped using the ferts not because they're bad, but because other ferts are better

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scottso420

Dude, don't listen to anything anyone says about MG if they say it's bad to grow with. Know why? 'cuz they're full of s***!!!!!!! If they smash MG ferts, then they have obviously never used MG. Chech out my thread called scottso's first grow in my signature. Check out pg 4, in particular. That's when I started with MG. If that doesn't show you MG is ok, nothing will. If you are careful with the concentration of your solution, you will be just fine!!!

Scottso

freevibe

If people complain about miracle grow I think it's only because there is better out there. Though you do want to avoid the pre fertilised soil as it tends to burn young plants.

stikyfingers

hey scottso right , ive got about 12 very succesful grows with mg, it does need amendments though," spaghum moss and perlite because it does start to get hard packed after about 5 waterings".

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Marcy

scottso420, I looked at page 4 of that thread and couldn't see anything that had anything to do with the advantages of growing with MG. Maybe it was a different page?

I sort of agree with what everyone is saying. I think any fertilizer will burn your plants if used incorrectly. And if urea N doesn't flush well then that's not a good thing. But it might be getting a bad rap from the organic growers? Anything not organic is bad? Not putting down that type of grow, but it just might be like the never ending argument of is Ford better than Chevy. Each enthusiast has their own thoughts on why one is better than the other, when they'll both get you down the road.

All that said I can see how the well experienced grower may go to organics over chemical ferts. Sounds like taste and smoothness is the whole reason. Or a good part of it.

Pepperpot

Bingo! You got it. Use whatever works for you.

Your automobile analogy, You can drive a mercedes or a VW, they both get you where you want to go.

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Beener

Hi Marcy. Miracle Gro "can" grow some fine MJ. It got its bad rap from being a chemical fertilizer. Chem ferts were developed many years ago, to treat soils that lack natural organic mass.

Large farmed out fields or earth that didn't naturally contain sufficient organic mass (to start with) were impractical to add organic mass too (such as compost). The amounts of compost etc., that would be needed to treat whole farms made it nearly impossible. Chem ferts were used to "bypass" the natural mechanism of living micro-organisims in soil. They were needed because the population of micro-organisms in the soil had been depleted to such a degree, that land was un-farmable....the soil was essentially dead.

Unfortunately, the chemical nutes also had an adverse effect. When used in soil that "does" have a viable population of micro-organisms, Miracle Gro can actually kill off the existing beneficial soil microbes....further continuing the cycle of dead earth that the Miracle Gro was developed to treat. Because of the low cost of these nutes, farmers found them very attractive whether they were dealing with a dead soil or not.

That doesn't mean that MG isn't a good fertilizer for MJ, but you can see in the larger scope of things, why chem nutes get a bad rap.

I have to respectably disagree with the notion that MG soil is bad because of the forest products it contains. I've found the soil structure to be "excellent"......Yup, I said excellent.

I spend an awful amount of time mixing my own soil mixes. Frankly. I use MG soil as a standard for comparison. The structure of a soil is the name of the game when it comes to organics, and by all personal accounts...The Miracle Gro soil itself is an excellent "organic" mix. Yes...organic.

It's only the nutes that are inorganic. But once the chem nutes have been added to the organic soil mix, it all becomes catagorized as chemical. The MG soil drains and breaths perfectly. It holds moisture without becoming too lose and dries without becoming too hard. It's structure is tight enough to support the plant from falling over while being soft enough to allow roots to travel easily. The small twigs etc. act as a means of aeration in the soil, again helping to maintain healthy viable root systems.

IMHO, if Miracle Gro was to just come out on the market, and was advertised as a "Marijuana Specific" nutrient such as Fox Farms (of which is "NOT" all organic), growers would rave about it, and the Scotts company could quadruple their prices.

I said it yesterday, and I'll repeat it today....Take a look at Buzzmobiles grows. He uses chemical nutes, and has some of the finest nugs you'll see. Before I came here, all I ever used was chem nutes (for 25yrs!) and I would have put those buds up against most others.

I've since changed to organics (in my search for the Holy Grail ) but I can't honestly say I've gotten any closer yet. Yes, I like the organics I use. But at the time, I liked the chems I used. If all I had was Miracle Gro or my budget led me in that direction, I know I can get a killer stash from my grow.....because I have. Good Luck

Master your technique - and the MJ gods shall fill your mason jars with sticky nugs of love

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grass_hopper

All my soil grows were in MG soil, which was find but tended to run a little acid pH. The soil is good quality and relatively cheap to buy at the local wally world. When I got into growing I took the advice of some very experienced growers and looked for ferts that matched their NPK ratios (20-20-20 for veg, 10-50-10 for flowering). MG ferts didn't run in those ratios, but Peters did so I started growign with peters and that's all I used from then on.

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king kola

I used miracle grow in my grows, but it wasn't soil mixed, was in powdered form that you add to a gallon of water. I used it once a week and in between that time i used plain water on the plants. A few weeks into growing just using plain water, soon as the leaves on my plants would start to yellow i would start them on the miracle grow. The leaves got their nice green color again within just maybe 2 or 3 days, they grew very healthy, didn't run into more problems. In the flowering stage i didn't use any fertilizers, had no organic ferts and even though they say you can still use miracle grow and just flush the plants with plain water 2 weeks before harvest i don't really remember using it. I don't think miracle grow does much to help the developement of bud though unlike some of the organic ferts available. As for MG soil i don't know much about at all cause i never used it.

For my next grow i'm moving toward organic ferts like fox farms products such as grow big for the veg and big bloom for the flowering. Organic ferts are natural and from what i've been told it's harder to burn your plants using them. I was told you still have to use plain water 2 or 3 weeks before harvest with those ferts too in order to flush everything out so it won't have a nasty taste when you smoke.