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 Miracle Gro Lets The Lazy Or Limited Gardener SucceedMiracle Gro, sometimes-misspelled miracle grow, fertilizer helps the senior, the physically limited, and the just-plain-lazy gardener grow veggies like the best of us. It also can provide essential plant nutrients that novices may not yet know are needed. Let me give you an example. I tend a garden behind a home and land owned by a senior citizen couple. Actually, he is young enough to be my great-great-grandson, but he is old enough to collect social security. Humans don’t age as well as gnomes . He has gardened all his life, but after a stroke it was all he could do to walk out into the garden. Making compost, digging in manure and other organic practices were completely beyond his diminished abilities. He thought his gardening days were over. Then he discovered Miracle Gro, by the Scotts Company. It is liquid fertilizer applied with a feeder that connects to the end of a garden hose. If you're strong enough to turn on a faucet and drag a hose around, you can still feed the garden. It has all of the primary, secondary and minor plant nutrients that a plant needs to thrive, and is foliar feeding at its best. Suddenly, my senior friend was back to his gardening glory, able to feed and grow his vegetables, flowers and shrubs and harvest fresh wholesome produce. Scotts has an All Purpose Plant Food formulation with current fertilizer numbers of 24-8-16. They claim it is good for all plants, and it works great for lawns and shrubs, corn and leafy vegetables. Not so well for fruiting vegetables and flowers, these all require higher levels of phosphorus. They have a great Tomato Plant Food (18-18-21) that works pretty well. But for my tomatoes and other fruiting veggies, I prefer their Bloom Booster (15-30-15). Intended primarily for flowers, the extra phosphorus gives my veggies more blooms and a better fruit set. That makes my garden more prolific. All of these have the necessary secondary and trace elements that your plants need, so they provide your plants with a complete meal. Foliar feeding means that soil pH even becomes less of an issue. The excess run off goes into the soil to be taken up later by the roots. If you have a small garden, don’t use the hose feeder, mix a teaspoon or two into each gallon of water and sprinkle it on with your watering can. Either way, they are water soluble and will dissipate quickly. Repeat the feeding every one to three weeks until harvest for continued vigorous growth. Are the Scotts products the only chemical liquid fertilizers on the market? No, they're just the most popular. There are others that are just as effective. Make sure that the one you choose has the necessary secondary and trace elements included. I believe in organic gardening, but if you are physically limited, lazy or still learning what your plants need, Miracle Gro might be your best solution. Happy gardening, Geefrank
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