What's Wrong With Using Miracle-Gro?

What Is Miracle-Gro?

While Miracle-Gro does make a range of organic products nowadays, most people's association with this brand is through their tubs of synthetic crystalline all-purpose fertilizer.

These blue crystals are a highly water-soluble form of nutrients derived from byproducts of the chemical and slaughterhouse industries.

Problems With Synthetic Fertilizer Use

While "highly water-soluble" may sound like a quick and easy way to get nutrients to your plants, it comes with serious downsides and I would urge you to think twice before using it.

Synthetic fertilizers are the "get rich quick" schemes of agriculture - promising quick returns and instant results today.

Remember, though, that there are always hidden costs to anything "quick and easy". Typically, short-term results come at the cost of long-term sustainability.

Things of true value, such as fertile organic soil, represent the culmination of years of hard work. There are no shortcuts to excellence.

Synthetic Fertilizers Pollute Groundwater

When a fertilizer is very soluble in water, it's telling you right on the package that it is going to leach into groundwater. That means that anyone downstream of your land will be dealing with your toxic runoff.

Synthetic fertilizers constitute one of the main sources of pollution for our streams, lakes, rivers, oceans, and aquifers.

Synthetics Kill Soil Microbiomes

Biology is intelligent. In organic systems, nutrients are broken down and released by microbes at slow steady rates, as necessary.

With synthetic chemical application, nutrients flood the soil and microbiome often at a rate and amount which microbes simply can't tolerate.

Plant health hinges upon there being enough nutrients of the right type, released in the right amount. Too little or too much nutrient availability will come at a detriment to plants.

If your goal is to supply just the right amount of nutrients to your plants, never too much nor too little, which of the following do you believe makes more sense for achieving that goal:

1. Apply synthetic nutrients manually, once every 2-3 weeks - causing a spike and then subsequent crash in available nutrient levels
2. Cultivate a healthy microbiome which breaks down and releases organic nutrients at a slow steady pace 24/7

If you chose option #2, you're wiser than the average gardener.

Just like blood sugar in humans, riding a rollercoaster of spikes and crashes is much more damaging to a system than a smooth and steady availability.

So too, in agricultural systems where an organic approach smoothes out the rollercoaster of spikes and crashes seen with synthetic fertilizer applications.

Alternatives to Synthetic Fertilizers

Rather than using synthetic fertilizers, regenerative organic agriculture focuses on building healthy soil through the use of cover crops, compost, and other organic amendments.

Biology, Not Chemistry

Synthetic vs. Organic

Organic-Certified Products To Get Started

If you want to ditch the Miracle-Gro and jump into organic gardening today, you can grab these and be confident that you're off to a solid start:

• Dr. Earth Tomato, Veggie, and Herb Organic Fertilizer
• Down To Earth Alfalfa Meal
• Down To Earth Rock Phosphate
• Down To Earth Kelp Meal

Any garden could benefit from the above-listed organic fertilizer and amendments. I've put most important items for plants on the top of the list, so start there if you can't get all 4 at once.

Eventually, if you get into more advanced organic gardening techniques like cover cropping and soil-building, you won't even need to buy organic inputs like these at all. For now, though, these will give you a great start on your organic gardening journey.

Learn More About Organic Gardening

If you're looking for a jumping-off point to kickstart your organic gardening journey, I highly recommend checkout out our Intro to Regenerative Gardening.