Green Living
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Miracle-Gro?
Is this EF? I've had a box of this forever, and hardly use it, but not really sure even what it is! I'm generally more of a 'if it grows and does well, great, if not, I guess its not supposed to be in my yard' type of gardener but long ago I bought some of this. Keep using? Freecycle?
Re: Miracle-Gro?
It's a fertilizer right? Probably not
IL's gave us a book on EF yard care for Christmas. I can check on this tonight and report back. With there being snow on the ground and all, I haven't started reading it yet.
Kinda embarassing but I'm not really sure what it is! I haven't used it in years, but I still have it.
It is a fertilizer. I don't know if it's eco friendly but I'm guessing no. It's made by Scott's which makes a lot of weed killers and fertilizers.
DH and I went to an organic gardening seminar last year and learned a ton. The coolest thing is making compost tea to fertilize your garden and lawn. You can either use compost that you make at home or buy the compost. You seep it in water and spray/pour it on your garden. We started this whole EF gardening regimen last summer and we noticed some huge improvements in our lawn and garden (and a reduction in weeds). This is the compost we bought
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
so, I googled and got this: http://www.miraclegro.ca/faq/
It says there are no pesticides, which is good. It contains a "formula of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium," which aren't so good if they aren't absorbed by the plants and end up in runoff and into streams. In theory though, the plants need those elements for nourishment, and if they do not have an adequate supply they won't grow as well. The balance of giving the plants enough without going overboard though, is how fertilizers are tricky.
Winter "cover crops" serve some of the same purposes as chemical fertilizers in farming. Things like clover get planted to nourish the soil before the corn goes back in the ground in the spring.
Disclaimer: This is testing the limits of my knowledge on this subject.
I wish I could do cover crops! I might next winter in my garden beds, but it would be really cool to do that for the lawn!
I have heard about compost tea but never done it. I think I will definitely give that a try this year!
I think I'm going to try to give my plants nutrition without the MiracleGro. Freecycle it is!
Okay, here is my schpeel about Miracle-gro.
Last year I had a tomato plant, and the plant had a distinct yellow tinge to the leaves--and a problem growing. I would look on forums about tomatoes--including Gardening here and I got all kinds of things--"Put egg shells on it," needs calcium, "Is it near a black elm tree?" (Please, I lived in AZ) etc.
Finally, I just deduced it was some sort of mineral deficiency, and googled that. Boom. Up came pictures and there was MY tomato plant, right there under zinc deficiency! I tried to figure out how to EF get Zinc into my plant's "Diet" through compost etc...and finally, I just followed the directions of the gardeners...and got Miracle-gro--which had a proper balance of Zinc already in it. I mixed it up, put it on and within an HOUR my plant was green. Within a day, new leaves. Within a week, it had doubled in size. Clearly, this was the issue--along with possibly other nutrition issues.
I put compost, eggshells, and the fish fertilizer around my tomatoes too, but getting the proper balance of nutrients in your plants is hard. If you have noticed that your plants are having trouble, which I had--then for a hobby gardener, I really don''t have an issue with Miracle-gro...I've personally seen results from it--and in my garden I used less than one box.