Frogleg wrote:

Shoot -- can't follow the players without previous quoting. However,

Sometime, someone wrote:

Using Miracle Grow exclusively will deplete your soil. There is no need
to add fertilizers to a fully organic soil, although soil amendments may
be useful from time to time.

I fail to understand how the use of Miracle-Gro can "deplete" soil.
It's simply a soluable fertilizer. I've heard wicked tales of "salts"
being left behind after years of use, but if true, it's still not a
case of soil "depletion."


I wrote that.

What follows is a viewpoint. I recognize that there are opposing viewpoints
and accept that I am unlikely to convince those holding the opposing
viewpoint to see things my way. I have no desire to begin a "holy war" over
Miracle Grow or even the foundry waste that passes as fertilizer. However,
your point merits response.

Adding organic material is the act of someone thinking years in advance.
Adding chemical fertilizers is the act of someone thinking only of a single
season.

The problem is not the (one time) Miracle Grow addition. Given time, the
soil will overcome that. The problem is the reliance on it. This reliance
results in an organic material deficiency. This is the depletion of which I
spoke. People who add MG are sidestepping the biological processes that
occur in healthy soil. They aren't feeding the bacteria, earthworms and
other denizens of a healthy soil that each contribute to the health of the
whole. These people tend not to add significant quantities of
humus-producing organic materials. Their soluble nutrients leach out of the
soil / wash away in the rain instead of being fixed in the root zone by
biological factors and held there in the cellulose sponge of decaying
vegetative matter.

Miracle Grow works. So does the vast majority of bagged fertilizer applied
by the ton to millions of acres of farmland over the past 40-50 years. But
they all work best on a soil that is already healthy. Big point. If the
soil isn't essentially healthy, then the "wow" effect will be missing from
the fertilizer. If organic material is added to a soil, it will remain
healthy indefinitely. The reverse is also true.

The first year, a ton of fertilizer produces great results. The next year it
can take a ton and a quarter to produce the same results, then a ton and
three quarters but the results are not as good, and so on as the organic
materials in the soil become depleted. Miracle Grow is NOT 'complete'
because soil needs a lot more than fertilizer to bear healthy quantities of
healthy crops year after year.

Before starting my garden, I gathered leaves from curbs throughout my
neighborhood the previous fall. That meant that I had tons of 'browns' for
a compost pile but almost no 'greens' in the spring. So, finding a bunch of
MG in the garage (we had just bought the house) I added Miracle Grow to get
the needed nitrogen. It worked. However, by the time it got to my soil, it
was no longer MG.

I am not anti-MG. I am anti-reliance-on-MG. A quick shot of bagged
fertilizer on an organic soil will give a quick shot of increased yield.
But the fertilizer boost isn't repeatable indefinitely. The time has come
to pay the piper ... a lot of our cropland soils are depleted.

Hitting my garden with a cheap shot of fertilizer is, in the end, expensive
because it sidesteps the natural processes that serve to keep my soil
healthy. How healthy? I have canned 25 pints (not jelly jars) of strawberry
jam this year off just 100 sq ft of strawberry bed. The bed is just now
winding down. I haven't added anything except water, compost and a
sprinkling of greensand to that bed in two years.

I know it may be difficult to reconcile the concept of adding something with
the concept of depletion but I have attempted to outline how it occurs and
that, I think, answers your question. If I gave a convincing answer, great.
But I really don't expect to change anyone's mind.

Bill
--
I do not post my address to news groups.