MG fertilizers are safe and extremely effective when used properly, and with due consideration. If not used correctly and with a little aforethought, they can create a lot of problems; but that can be said of any soluble product used as a vehicle for nutritional supplementation. Most negative issues that arise usually stem from a lack of understanding the plant's needs and how to most effectively and safely use fertilizers.

The margin for grower error and the 'forgiveness factor' increases in a direct relation with soil porosity (as it increases). Conversely, as soil porosity and drainage decreases, it's accompanied by a decrease in how far the grower is allowed to drift from optimum practices w/o Mother Nature exacting a penalty to be paid by your plant(s) in the form of lost potential or other easily discernible symptoms.

Synthetic soluble fertilizers like MG, Foliage-Pro, and similar, are the easiest forms of fertilizer to use and get favorable results from, and offer the easiest way for the grower to establish and maintain control over a nutritional supplementation program.

That said, Miracle-Gro makes a lot of different NPK % formulations, and all are not created equal. For 99% of the plants you would be likely to grow, their 24-8-16 and 12-4-8 NPK formulations are the best choice. (Both are 3:1:2 ratio fertilizers, which come closest to mimicking the ratio at which plants actually use the nutrients. I prefer Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 (also a 3:1:2 ratio) for almost everything I grow. It is superior to the Miracle-Gro products in several ways, but the 2 most important considerations for houseplant growers comes from the fact that the 9-3-6 supplies N w/o relying on urea, which helps keep plants compact under low light conditions; and the 9-3-6 also contains Ca and Mg in soluble form, nutrients not found (but critical for normal growth) in the MG soluble fertilizers.

Al

I think the only real question is how many of al's posts can you read before making the switch to the foliage pro? for me it was about two but then I didn't need much of a reason to give money to anything other than the mg monopoly.

working on the soil mixes too but a little more difficult to acquire and frankly the answers to my questions are painful. lol

thanks for all the info you have put on this site al

Miracle-gro will be fine.
Safe, too.
The key to success is to read and follow the directions!

This post was edited by jean001a on Fri, Jul 26, 13 at 23:05