brain dead that was supposed be organic gardening forum not cooooo, lol.

Yes, Rich, I agree. I try to stay pretty organic too, but I don't use MG potting mix.

The only MG product I use is the blue fert, and I only use that in containers. Those are composted at the end of the season.

Karen

Rich, I've wondered the same thing! The past couple years, I've mixed MG with an organic seed germinating mix, mainly because I like a lighter mix, which means a little less chemical fertilizers in the garden.

I also dump the old potting mix out of the planters on the porch each spring, and put in fresh stuff, but I guess my assumption there was that by the end of the season, the plants had used up most of the fertilizer that was in the mix. We have a very hard packed clay here, so anything added to it can only improve it, as far as texture anyway.

Bonnie

Yes, to be fully organic, you do need organic everything, including the growing mix for your seedlings. By definition, as soon as you add chemicals, your soil and plants are no longer "organic." Whether this "damages" soil is a whole topic in itself, and not something I feel qualified to discuss.

Miracle Grow makes an organic potting mix called Organic Choice. It's in brown bags rather than their brilliant green. It's not OMRI listed, but the MG website says it meets the criteria. They feel that people will buy based on the MG reputation, without official organic certification.

I used to use the regular Miracle Grow soil too. Yes, it has chemical fertilizer in it. I also fed my plants the blue plant Kool-Aid. I switched to the Organic Choice when it became available, and I've been using it for my houseplants for a couple of years. I also used it for my WS containers. It varies a lot in texture from bag to bag, and my last bag came with bonus fungus gnats that hatched in my house, so I'm not going to use it any more. There are many organic brands out there, so I'm going to switch. If I can round up all the ingredients I may even mix up a batch of Al Tapla's mix. The folks on the container growing forum rave about this homemade mix, but they mostly use it with chemical fertilizers.

Right, the degree of actual damage to the garden soil would be, it seems to me, pretty minimal. A few cups of potting mix added to an entire garden would be minute by comparison. Needle-in-a-haystack kind of thing.

As long as you're not trying to be a certified organic grower it's probably not a big deal. If I loved the MG potting mix I'd use it anyway. I don't love it, don't use it unless I can't get anything else.

Karen

Thanks for your feed back all. Edie I used Als' formula a few years back and it worked great for all my container plants, I didn't use it for starting seeds just for seedling transplants.

Edie, I had the exact same experience with the Organic Choice! I typically don't stick with organic on the houseplants, but I just happened to have a bag on hand when I needed to pot something up. This was last fall, and I am still battling a horrible fungus gnat infestation with that one pot. Thankfully they haven't bothered the other plants yet. How did you get rid of yours?

Bonnie