The most common miracle gro fertilizer in question(THERE ARE OTHERS) ALL PURPOSE PLANT FOOD NPK OF 24 8 16----------Okay, I consider this a big big question from those who have finally and ultimately figured it out, I would like to continue using miracle grow all purpose fertilizer, while I am a beginner to save my valuable and good booster and such I bought, and not waste the stuff while I have been “learning” through the school of hard knocks mistakes, later when I have successful clones, knowledge, I am going totally organic, probably four or more months from now or who knows. So on a couple plants I want to use miracle grow, maybe all of them instead of using slow release fertilizer soil I just bought, but use miracle grow like I do outside on other plants. The problem is there are stories all over the internet, the instructions are bad, mainly cause folks generally use a hose with a dispenser where you put the blue powder in a quart cup and water flows over it into a spray.
Now, the “one gallon quandary”, the bogus instructions for “one gallon” is use large end of plastic spoon which is 1.5 tablespoons per gallon and a half for outside plants. Or use small end which is 1/2 teaspoon for “indoor plants”. I think maybe plants in three or five gallon buckets are beyond “indoor plants”, to get a full effect of NPK of 24 8 16. I was using 1/2 teaspoon, and I think I was under nuting them in the five gallon containers, apart from other problems.
If a person does a search on the internet, there are opinions all over the place, I believe lots of bad stories from over nuting/too much powder or such. Now I know there must be a formula for how much soil, I’d think maybe two teaspoons per gallon of water is fine. I may already have damaged plants, I gave a tablespoon for gallon of water, my tap water, the fertilizer fixed the ph balance perfectly, and distilling water is getting tedious. Then I worried, so I poured another large quantity of water on all the plants, to thin out the mixture in the soil.
I swear I think when I am growing mainly in my shed later, I am gonna be so organic, the rooms will stink of either composted organic matter, and manure compost(maybe the sterilized steer manure my mother told me about(hey, what are elderly mothers with a lifetime of gardening experience for but to advise their 47 year old son how to maybe grow better pot!).
Anyway, calling out all those successful users of miracle grow blue powder or similar, its beginning to be an internet legend, I have read posts where one person says one tablespoon per gallon, then right after someone says one teaspoon per gallon, and then two more people with the same alternating opinion. If I had about thirty plants, I’d just find out with by figuring with a sampling which kills and which doesn’t. But wow, word to the wise, and I was not that day, never, never, after a successful first week, water clones again that are still wet, with a weak solution of miracle grow and water, …boom, heavily damaged and wilting, along with plants were drowned in excess water, I read that new clones, you can forget about fertilizing for a good long time, ah, doy ralph, I wasn’t feeling well that evening.
(of course, there are many users who are religiously against miracle grow, they either had bad experience, they have lots of “experience” now, or the all purpose aint good for complete veg/flowering cycle no doubt, but there are other ratio miracle grow they sell. Plus the fact that a chemical fertilizer needs to be stopped from use at least two weeks before harvest or it will affect cured taste quality).