Miracle grow is fertilizer, so I would say no.

Definitely not. But you might want to rethink the miracle gro. It really isn't sustainable for year round gardening.

Miracle Grow is a marketing company.
They do not actually manufacture anything of their own.
There are more than 55 other companies in the shadows that supply MG.
Why not purchase a product manufactured by a company right here in Florida?
Sunniland in Sanford is a perfect example.
They make great fertilizers made specifically for Florida conditions.
There are many other fine Florida companies out there for garden products.
Anybody have any recommendations?

Insufficient information to answer appropriately.

Are you gardening in the ground or in containers? What is your calcium source? "Calcium builds strong bones" also applies to plants structures.... What is the life expectancy of your plants? MG does not have the minor elements most plants need, but if use is short-term like us veggie gardeners with plants that only last a season it will do as long as we supplement the calcium in our soils/mixes. For long term use for plants that will live for years you really need to supplement with the minor elements as well to provide for optimal growth and health, and all this is assuming you're not talking about acid loving plants that would prefer gypsum (calcium sulfate) over garden lime (calcium-magnesium carbonate) as a calcium source.

So, do you want to be a little more specific about your question?

Tom

I would have been more specific if I knew that it was neccessary. As you can probably tell, I'm don't know a whole lot about gardening. I only have a small garden with broccoli, some lettuce, bell peppers and soon I'll have cauliflower. It's all in the ground and I have no idea about the calcium. Any suggestions on what to use for someone on a limited budget?

i use lesco palm, 13-3-13 on everything....i mean everything with great results. very slow to break down and has a ton of micro-nutrients. a bit pricey, but i start saving around christmas and apply it during "bike week" in daytona. very scientific....:)

Get yourself a 50lb bag of garden lime from HD or Lowes, it will cost about ten bucks and last you quite a while, then work some into the top foot of soil according to directions. MG will work fine for veggies, the minor elements are not crucial short-term, you'll find a lot of folks here grow organic so you'll get a lot of opinions on things. I grow mine in containers so I use inorganic slow release fertilizers with the minor elements in them. The Lesco products are good, I just have preference for Nutricote so I use the Florikan products, same thing as Dynamite you can buy at HD in the 2lb bottle for $10, I buy the 50lb bags to bring the price down from $5/lb to about $1.80/lb. I'm sure others will be along shortly with other options, but for in-ground veggie gardening I think you can get away with MG + calcium.

Tom

I use a composted mix of chicken poop, dried cow patties (they are oh so much easier to pick up when dried), shredded oak leaves & pine straw, spoiled hay, pine bark, pine wood chips, ground up hardwood charcoal, crushed egg shells, and Dolomite Lime.

It's the stuff you find on an everyday working farm with a few additives.

Lou

Basically, your first season with miracle gro will probably be very successful, but it is not good for the soil. If you keep moving your garden it could be quite workable if you are just growing seasonal veggies.

The reason a lot of us are primarily organic isn't only the environment. Florida soils become completely inhospitable with synthetic fertilizer use. The best defense against things like nematodes etc. is lots and lots of organic additives. Using chemicals begets the need to use more chemicals as you kill off beneficial insects etc.

Basically organic gardeners feed the soil, miracle gro feeds the plants and adds harmful salts to the soil etc.

Hope this helps.

Michelle

p.s. I sometimes use a little miracle gro when my plants need an emergency boost.

If you can get some bags of organic... Milorganite, Black Cow, Black Hen, Fish Emulsion ( in a jug - liquid ), Cottonseed Meal, Alfalfa pellets, and throw in some egg-shells and kitchen scraps ( not meat scraps ) to make compost, with grass clippings, leaves, maybe some seaweed... if you fish, throw in some catfish or whatever you catch and don't eat, just make sure you cover it good..... all this stuff feeds the soil.... if you have access, get some horse manure from stables and pile it up and let it rot a bit..... mulch..... soon you will have a dark rich earthworm-filled loam with a nice rich smell, not yucky at all.... which is what you want and everything you grow loves it.... sally

You are going to get many opinions.....some are just simply wrong formed by people that have been fed a line of BS, believed it and repeat it. Chemical fertilizers are not evil, they will not destroy the soil unless used stupidly and it would be fair to point out most of us would not be here without them.

Best idea is to take a balanced approach. You must stop thinking you are growing plants, instead try to grow soil and the plants will follow effortlessly. Almost anything and everything you can add to that ground that is natural will build the strength, fertility and tilth of the soil. If you do not have the ground or resources it can be very difficult to gather enough plant material to build good soil, but while difficult all it takes is dedication and effort. That said chemical fertilizers have a place in the garden and you will grow bigger more productive plants with them no matter how rich your soil is. The key is to apply the chemical in a well thought out and educated manner. Timing is critical to getting the best bang for your buck. We humans tend to think if a little is good a lot must be better and that is one main reason chemical fertilizers get a bad rap.

The fertilizer companies are in the business of making money and there is nothing at all wrong with that but their instructions for their products tend to lean toward using more of the product than is needed. You would be better off IMHO to use 1/4 what the miracle grow label calls for and use it twice as often.....that still would have you using 1/2 what they recommend over time.

I do use Miracle grow, mostly the acid formula but the regular as well and it is a good product that does give results. As Tom pointed out the slow release fertilizers are very good but the cost could be prohibitive for some.

The advice Saldut gave is spot on, it is the approach I take as well, though I still use a few 100 pounds of chemical fertilizer a year currently though that will drop off eventually.

I really wasn't suggesting that chemical fertilizers are evil. As I said, I use miracle gro from time to time to give a boost. And it doesn't harm the soil 'because" it comes from chemicals. Miracle gro specifically causes salt build up. I have heard it described as snack food, that gives a lift but long term reliance causes decline.

I do stand behind the idea that chemical pesticides (as well as many organics) make things worse almost all the time. They may be necessary for commercial agriculture, but in the long run my garden simply does better when I avoid insecticides.

Michelle

Looking back at my earlier response, Bamboo rabbit has a point. I should have said "sole reliance" on chemical fertilizers make the ground inhospitable. As everyone has said natural amendments make a huge difference.

Thanks for the responses guys. I have a bin of leaves and grass clippings that have been rotting for like 4 months or so. I think what I'm gonna do is use that for my rows and use the MG spray every week or so. My Mema was saying something about having some extra potash, so I may use that too.

talk about a toxic issue, everybody has their "magic bullet." take a bit from everybody you've heard from and dump the "miracle gro." just a thought.....no chickens here, no cows,......squirrel poop? lot's of dog poop....:)

"Looking back at my earlier response, Bamboo rabbit has a point. I should have said "sole reliance" on chemical fertilizers make the ground inhospitable."

Now that I agree with. Growing up on a large working dairy farm/market farm you learn that farming is a balancing act. If you dump chemical fertilizers on the land in an effort to maximize profits you will make more money but at a cost as after a few years of doing so the soil is burned up, ruined and takes years to bring it back to what it was.

Seems that the farmers I knew were poor, so they always had a wagon ready for the manure and they grew plenty of 'cover crops' and turned it under and rotated ... the cows and chickens and pigs and horses fed the earth and ate what the earth produced and the farmer had a huge garden and orchard and bees and a well, no TV but several huge freezers.. always full... and rifles over the door and traps hanging in the shed.... in the winter they needed a rope strung between the house and the barn so they wouldn't get lost in the sleet-storm, unless they lived on a farm with all the out-buildings strung together.... and a huge wood-pile..... long-ago indeed..... sally

Here is a formula for balanced organic fertilizer most items can be found between good garden centers and farm stores. For economy buy in bulk it will last a long long time.
Use 4-6 quarts of this mix plus 1/4-1/2 in compost or manure per 100 sq. ft.
Mix uniformly, in parts by volume:
4 parts seed meal ( you can use grass clippings use 4x as much)
1/4 part ordinary agricultural lime, best finely ground
1/4 part gypsum (or double the agricultural lime)
1/2 part dolomitic lime ( double if you can't the other limes)

Plus, for best results:
1 part bone meal, rock phosphate or high-phosphate guano
1/2 to 1 part kelp meal (or 1 part basalt dust)
I copied this (not sure where) and have the complete article just email me if you want a copy

Sally,

We farmers were not poor, we just didn't have any money. We were rich in many other ways than the accumulation of money. Your farm scenario brings back plenty of memories, most good but one bad in particular... Those were not traps hanging in the shed, that was me and my siblings hung there waiting for the blood to dry after getting a thorough whooping with daddy's razor strap for attaching mom's english saddle to the sow and giving the youngest 'piggy back' rides. I don't ever remember dad so 'ripping hot' as on that day. I think back on it now and laugh but back then I wondered if I would ever walk normal again after that thrashing.

The old adage 'boys will be boys' is so true.

Lou

Lou- remember the old adage " spare the rod and spoil the child" ??.... yes, folks were rich in the old days in more ways than one..... sally

That's funny Lou.

I grew up on a dairy farm near Charlotte NC. 2 cousins and my self cornered a cow in the dry cow pasture and all 3 mounted up. Yippy I aye! the cow went down the hill to a small gully(ravine to you city slickers). We thought she was going to jump! Guess what, she stopped and off in the gully we went. Yuk, had to clean some clothes before we went back to the house or we would have got a lashing with milk bottle crate slats. Oh , for the good ol' days.

Guess that farm stuff maybe grows on you, unloaded over 2 yds3 of horse stable cleanings in my composter before breakfast. Ah , 63 here this am.

I also remember the 50 or 100 lb. flour sacks were made of cloth prints and we kids would pick out our shirt material from the flour sacks. Mom & my sisters would sew together the patterns they cut up on the old foot treadle singer sewing machine. Poof we all had new clothes and bread too.

I might be showing my age by writing this,
Born in the 30's, Lou

Keep em coming, reminds me of the stories my mom used to tell about growing up on the farm. I just got a smidgen of it growing up as a boy but those are sure fond memories for me....

So, Robert, see how this all goes? A little education, a lot of friendly chat ;-)

Tom

That's OK Lou, I was born in the 20s, and remember the Depression vividly.... I think it taught us to save everything including old plastic bags and pieces of cardboard... yikes..... sally

Sally,

I'm also in the habit of saving everything, when I moved to here I couldn't believe all the junk we accumulated as we started to clean the out buildings and barn. The son-in-law said don't throw anything out, just pick over what you want to bring and they will do the tossing of what they don't want. He is a person so very much like me and I'm glad that they now live on the old farm up north. He even got the old International Harvester Tractor running again, I've no clue where he found the parts. He sent pics of it all painted up red and running. Debbie loved the idea of moving back home to where she grew up, and said he was out in the barn tinkering on it for about a year. It's nice to know your kids have taken to the old farmstead and the grand kids can grow up in a country setting with real values.
Sorry, I'm rambling here! (tears in my eyes) LOL

Lou

...and the grand kids can grow up in a country setting with real values....

Lou, that's probably possible as long as they can keep them away from the X-Box and computers :-) :-(

Tom,

Where the farm is the ISP is dialup at 22k on a good day, mostly 14.4, no cable because the state says it cannot cross a power line above ground and it would cost too much to bury it for only one customer, no cell phones work reliably because the tower is on a different mountain top. The mountains cut off everything including satellite TV. The city is a ten mile drive around to the other side. Regular TV was 3 channels when I was there and I'm not sure it still runs with the new digital TV signals now. The kids enjoy the ATV's, snowmobiles & mountain bikes... lots of walking & hiking trails to use them on and the trails go right on up into Canada. They enjoy living there because each kid now has their own bedroom. There's a brook fed pond at the bottom where they can fish, gig frogs, etc. I left my aluminum row boat there and they use it, they ice skate on the pond in winter. When they came to visit I asked how they liked living there and they all excitedly related tales of doing this and that and how cool it was.

Lou

Man, that sounds great Lou! I remember the days of only three TV channels, we spent a LOT of time outside....Sure sounds like a great place to grow up.

Tom

Lou- if it goes right up into Canada, that sounds like Vermont, where it goes up into Quebec....Lake Memphremagog goes from Newport Vt. up to Magog, Que. and is very deep and cold, but beautiful.... my hubby grew up there.... sally

Sally,

Vermont, New Hampshire, & Maine all border with Canada and the trails crisscross the three states and into Canada. New England is very beautiful country, especially in fall when the leaves turn and paint the mountains and valleys *with God's paintbrush.

*(for you non believers --insert--> with mother nature's paintbrush)

Lou