If you enjoyed this video, please "Like" and share it to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching 🙂TIMESTAMPS for convenience: 0:00 The Fertilizer Test Experiment 1:24 NPK Ratio Explained 2:33 MiracleGro Fertilizer Analysis 3:31 The NPK Ratio Theory 4:56 Mixing Water Soluble Fertilizers 5:58 Making Potting Mix And Test Plants 7:53 The Fertilizing Schedule 9:15 How To Fertilize The Test Plants 10:23 Two Weeks Later 11:24 70 Days Later 12:39 Why I Think The Experiment Failed 17:04 My Thoughts On Synthesized Fertilizers 20:17 Adventures With Dale
what about that "miracle gro soil"? I used it to plant grass seed and the grass turned yellow! Must be the same problem - no trace nutrients - good theory! I've been adding mulched grass and that seems to be saving the grass.
Love the pumpkin recipe. Dale is very much loved and spoiled as they should all be. You and Britney are awesome parents. I think your theory sounds very logical, like plants, we need trace minerals along with the vitamins. We could possibly die if we totally lacked some of them as well. What do you about a vegan fertilizer experiment?
I've a question for you.. WOULD it be possible to get srigs of your figs? 3-5 from each tree?? Instead of mowing them?? I used to have a family tree over 100 yrs old but when my dad died I lost the tree. I really want to start with good strong plants. I believe you have good ones..
I'm so grateful that you didn't delete the failed experiment. I find these types of videos more educational and helpful to me as a gardener. Nothing beats a living biome in your soil!
Unlike Laura/Garden Answers who might mention a failed planting only if enough people comment on it, but even then it's very "oh I don't know what happened" followed by a quick shrug & off to the next topic. She's not a gardener..... she's a plant hoarder
This is what is so important. Without these honest, fair, and truthful results, any garden video could lead someone to copying it, and having disasterous results without the huge funding to fix it (that some other channels have). Thank you so much. This is as shocking as the Miraclegro vs. Kellogg's results by EpicGardening, and the Miralegro vs urine conclusion from your own channel.
You were basically trying to run a hydroponic dutch bucket system but failed when you added peat moss which is organic and holds on to way too much water . Additionally, it has the potential to significantly change the ph of the medium to very acidic, locking out many nutrients and preventing availability to the plants. You should repeat the experiment with only perlite. It is not organic and won't add anything to the system, unlike peat moss when it breaks down. Set up the same experiment but this time, wash off the dirt from the roots as best as possible and then plant in perlite. Set up a watering schedule for 4-6 times per day for a minute or so and drain to waste. That way you will see the affects from only the fertilizer and not the decomposing peat moss. No offence, but i think your theory of why that experiment failed is way out in left field and has nothing to do with miracle grow not providing various micronutrients. I think it failed due to nutrient lockout and lack of oxygen to the roots.
Correct. It’s a hydroponic experiment. Hoocho grows in straight coir without draining. Tons of food. Rerun the Miracle Grow experiment after mastering fundamentals of hydroponics.
Bravo. Yeah I think soil that's oversaturated with water has straight up murdered my plants before. It creates an anaerobic environment around the roots so the only things going on biologically are decay.
Whenever a transplant's growth is stalled , or I miss the schedule to take starts out of the cells and transplant into bigger pots or into the ground...I use a very diluted solution of hydro chemicals (tomato blend). This technique has worked flawlessly. If I were to use Miracle Grow instead? Death and Damnation.
The first thing that struck me that made me gasp was at the beginning. For container plants MiracleGro’s dosage is 1/2 TEASPOON per gallon. You used 1 TABLESPOON per gallon, that’s 6 times the recommended dosage.
Miraclegro does say 1 TBS per gallon for outside plants, but as all gardeners know, half the recommendation. Always, always go lighter on fertilizer than manufacturers recommend. You risk root burn with too much.
There may be another factor at play here and it doesn't have anything directly to do with the micros, and you kinda answered it yourself. First you added dissolved fertilizer every 2 weeks into an inert medium. The plants had a feast or famine feeding. The inert media has no nutritional carry over. Any organic such as compost, fish fertilizer etc breaks down slowly, even when pre-digested and continues to feed for many days/weeks after application. That is why when used as a supplement to the liquid fertilizer solution the plants do better. If you were to ration out the same amount of liquid fertilizer into your daily watering schedule so in 2 weeks the same dose was applied, I say your plants would have done much better. Hydroponics works the same way with diluted doses applied daily over time and the plants thrive...For your consideration. Happy gardening.
I think the plants would have had a better shot had I fed them less but a lot more often, but seeing the results of the experiment, I'm very much convinced it was a micro-nutrient deficiency. If you look at the labels at 2:50, they aren't very impressive, especially when you compare them to my big back of Jack's 20-20-20, which contains more things. I'm going to have to re-structure the experiment to account for these missing micros/secondary macro's. I think MiracleGro is less expensive than Jack's and other water soluble fertilizers for a reason. They don't have the trace nutrient content.
@@TheMillennialGardener You should be able to identify exactly which micronutrient deficiency they had as the symptoms are quite varied. You can't because that's not what caused your plants to die. As an elder millennial (born in 82) I probably had more experience as an 18 year old growing weed in my basement with miracle grow potting mix and miracle grow 15-30-15 alone than you do now. I used the small scoop per gallon to fertilize (not feed because plants eat light, I don't say I'm feeding myself when I take a vitamin) If you use a huge dose of fertilizer like you did you better be damn sure the soil never dries out at all because that will concentrate the salts and burn your plants. But go ahead and disregard my comment like you're doing with everyone else because you did your research and noticed there are more ingredients in one brand than another. A lot of those extra micronutrients are added in hydro formulations because it's common to use RO water, tap water has plenty of micros. Peat moss and coco coir are technically compost and have trace minerals in them as well.
I grow in inert material (coco+perlite) and if I did not water with fertilizer every time I would have some serious deficiencies. The work around to that would be slow release granules but even with that the results aren't so great.
Peat has a good cation exchange capacity. It helps to use dolomite lime as a pH buffer. If you are not adding compost for micronutrients, it is important to fertilize with hydroponic solution that contains the full range of usable nutrients.
What I think I learned is that $7 boxes of MiracleGro aren't enough to satisfy the needs of plants. They work great to boost plants when given supplemental organics and healthy soil, but they're not enough on their own. From now on, I'll look at them more like a supplement than actual food.
@@TheMillennialGardener you can't draw that conclusion from this experiment. I'm pretty sure those products aren't meant to be used in a nearly inert medium. Remember too that we don't "feed" plants. They make their own food. We provide the nutrients they need to make that food. And technically plants make that food from carbon hydrogen and oxygen (pretty much from the air).
I think that what you discovered is what I've believed and practiced for years. Fertilizers are simply an ammendment that should only be used if your soil is lacking necessary nutrients and you want instant results. When building soil those ammendments can be sourced naturally and are superior to the commercial NPK fertilizers. We always tended our compost heaps and supplemented beds with organic mushroom compost from local growers. Long term this is the only way to go in my opinion. I know too many gardeners who go the synthetic and even organic fertilizer route and the long term results are less than desirable.
@@JohnJohn-wr1jo Yep. I know a place where digested sludge from a wastewater treatment plant is dumped. The tomatoes and other vegetables growing there are absolute giant and lush. Too bad its human waste with unknown metals contamination.
I've been fermenting weeds from my garden. Two weeks and smelly but THEE best. I always have enough for that and just started up my composting bins. I was converted by watching Charles Dowdy here on YT.
Check your local recycling center/landfill or county transfer station. Often times, they offer free or very inexpensive load-your-own mulch or compost.
Fourth generation Oregon farmer here. ANY fertilizer with an NPK above 5-5-5 is TOO HOT!! Bigger numbers do NOT mean better results. I've used many kinds of fertilizer, and I ALWAYS reduce it with at least 30% more water. You can't "force feed" plants to make them grow better. If they need more, they'll let you know. Trust your plants, not a chemical factory!!
@@TheMillennialGardeneryou can grow in pure peat moss and you'll only notice a lack of nutrients by the leaves turning lighter and lighter green and becoming weaker and weaker of a plant , those fertilizers are the problem. Worm castings contain all the needed nutrients , you can just add worm castings to your soil and you'll get purely benifets without any worry of putting to much, if you put 20 grains of the average store baught fetilizizer in a pot you'll kill 99% of plants , those fertilizers should only be used in outdoor soil watered in for a yr before you plant anything, direct use fries plants
@@TheMillennialGardener Even though they were grown outdoors I think you should have used the indoor tiny side of the spoon because they were grown in pots. Good luck next time with the manure compost and maybe put out a pot with 1/4 strength of this fertilizer mix to prove me wrong. Consider looking up EC tables for hydroponic growing solutions and comparing it to what you ended up making. Even though you were not trying to your use of an inert grow medium took you from gardening into hydroponics and tomatoes require a 2 to 3 dS m-1 strength nutrient solution.
@@TheMillennialGardeneralso peat moss and coco are both rly bad , coco contains tons of salt that can't be removed and kills plants, peat is extremely acidic so all store baught peat is treated with calcium carbonate and when the calcium is flushed out it becomes deadly to most plants , worm castings contain everything a plant needs and is the only median that you can use 100% as your median and get perfect harvests that are super large fruits. There is no such thing as an inert median that plants can grow in like soil , perlite won't work by itself as a median and neither will rock wall or clay pellets, funnily enough clay itself is the only completely inert median in nature but it has to be made into pellets for it to be well draining and than it's not able to hold enough water
As someone who does nutrient IV therapies in humans, I feel it’s similar-one cannot take a big concentration of any nutrient. Minerals often share channels and too much of one will block absorption of others. You can cause cardiac arrest by taking too much potassium, or magnesium, as it crowds out calcium which shares the same uptake channel (e.g. tunnel)
i basically found you last week but wish i found you years ago, youre a tremendous well of knowledge and what i love is you giive us the disasters and not just the bounties....because where i live....its a lot of trial and error and a lot of disasters with a wee bit of bounties! i just learned so much from this video , thank you so so much!!!
I've used Miracle Grow on my plants for 60 years along with other organic and non organic fertilizers. I worked for a huge greenhouse back in the early 1970's, which supplied all kinds of flowers to many of the florists in the whole valley. They used a water soluble fertilizer every time they watered their plants, but they only used half of the amount of fertilizer. I use miracle grow on my garden and grow tomatoes 10 feet high with a basket of tomatoes per plant. I know from years of gardening that potted plants will never do as good as plants grown in the garden.
Sure, I agree, plants are always going to grow better in real soil. But this was an experiment, not plants that were actually going in the garden. Seeing the results, I'll make some modifications and re-run the experiment.
@@kerryalbritton6532 I feel like if you were going to use half strength in this experiment where he used coco coir instead of potting soil/garden mix/compost/etc, he would most definitely need to feed more frequently.
They used half strength so they don’t grow. I use full strength in coco every day. You can’t just sprinkle or use a spoon.You need a scale and a meter to fertilize like this. I promise that my tomatoes in bags grow bigger,better,and definitely fruit more. I got over 350 tomatoes on one plant of Amish paste
Guess the poison is always on the dose, love your videos man. No other gardener challanges old traditions like you do. Your take on the prunning aspect was mind blowin' 🤯
I think his growth medium was set up to fail from the start. You can't grow hydroponic in soil. It's a straight up anaerobic environment which only kills and decays plants.
This is how I learn to be a better gardener. I like running these experiments to see what happens. It's the only way we'll know for sure. It's not just about testing the upper limits of plants. It's also about trying to break them to see what makes them fail. I learned more from this experiment than anything else I've done so far in 2024. I'm glad to share it with everyone.
I find pruning not to be as detrimental as you think. I have natural pruners in deer, rabbits, hail, and frost, which have all knocked back my plants, but the strong survive and, in most cases, thrive.
Personally I thank you for both the success & “failure” videos. I’m a beginner gardener (been gardening for about 3 years) & continue to struggle with my garden. I learn more each year from others as well as my own experience in the garden from year to year. And I think I learn more from the “failures” than from what was done right. So keep it up. I appreciate all of the experiences that I can learn from. Besides experimenting is fun and educational & I’m definitely all about learning. And I love how you include clips with Dale at the end of all your videos. I have 3 doggos who regularly join me in the garden. Happy gardening everyone!🥒🥕🌻
I almost didn't bother watching this video, because I already knew how it was going to finish. Many of your commentators have already explained why it killed the plants, so I won't elaborate on that subject. I would suggest that you do a nutrient demonstration using only distilled water and separate macro and micro nutrients to show the effect of nutrient deficiencies. I realize this may be too 'sciencey' for your channel, but it's a worthwhile demonstration. Having seen this nearly 40 years ago with tomato plants has left an indelible impression on me regarding nutrient limitations. I think many of your followers would be surprised at the results, as was I. Thanks for taking the time to make/post this video.
I think it's awesome that you did this experiment. Every gardener experiences a failure, and this helps us to understand what a contributing factor might be. This is great information to have.
I have datil and tabasco pepper plants 10 years old that have trunks. Including a Carolina reaper that is 4 years old and has a woody trunk also. I live in Florida and protect them from our occasional freezing temps.
It's incredible. I am going to try to get that one pepper to Year 10 😆 What's amazing is they produce *all winter long!* The production is lower, and they don't get nearly as spicy as they do during the warm weather, but I truly harvest them year round.
Yeah they look lovely! I would love a video about these plants, how do you prune them and overwinter them, how do you prune you bell peppers in the beginning for more growth later on?
I love that you didn’t scrap this video and I love that. We all learn something new and I appreciate the time it takes to do these experiments but I felt I learned something new and I’m a big user of miracle, but I will be changing over to the jobes organic soon.
Tomatoes like acidic soil. And the peat moss you get these days doesn’t really have that low of pH. And the science behind peat moss and studies have shown that the lowering of pH caused by peat moss is totally diminished in a week’s time. Coco peat also isn’t peat moss and the pH range pf coco peat is inline with what tomatoes want.
Tomatoes love an acidic environment. I don't think the issue is with peat moss. All my potted plants, including all the giant tomatoes under my shade cover, are grown in the exact same mix. The only difference is that I add compost and mulch on top, and I fortify the soil with bone meal and organic 5-5-5. I think that MiracleGro products are just not designed to be the *only* thing you give your plants. They're made to enhance growth, not be the only thing given.
@@1165slugman If you do the research most of American potting soils based on peat moss have a relatively neutral pH. It has nothing to do with soil pH. Coco peat has been an issue for years in the nursery trade. Countries like the UK that have banned sphagnum peat moss are struggling with using Coco peat. It’s an okay media if you mix it in soil blends. By itself it’s horrible solo media.
I love your experiments. Thank you for taking the time to make those kind of videos as they are very important. Last Fall, I emptied my matured compost and dug it into my veggies beds. In March, I started my heirloom tomatoes (from my saved seeds) in a sterile potting soil intended for indoor plants, rather than in a seed starting soil. As soon as the first true leaves appeared, I started feeding them with half of the recommended doze of Miracle Grow water soluble 20-20-20 fertilizer. Later, I transferred the seedlings into 750 g yogurt containers (with drainage holes). I added some Miracle potting soil mixed with a bit of bone meal. By now, the seedlings did not fit under my grow lights, so I placed them inside my flimsy cold frame. When overnight frost was forecasted, I brought them indoors for the night and took them back out in the morning. This back and forth was going on for about two weeks. After the last frost date, I was ready to plant them into the ground. I put a handful of pelleted chicken manure, that contained calcium into each planting hole, lightly dusted the entire bed with dolomite calcium and watered each plant with transplanting fluid to prevent transplanting shock. Now, I continue to feed them every 10 - 14 days with Miracle Grow water soluble 20-20-20. My indeterminate heirloom tomatoes are growing strong 1' thick main stem and are 10 feet tall. I am harvesting fruit, that is noticeably bigger than it in the previous years. I believe that I have finally discovered the winning combination of organic + synthetic, from seed germination to harvest. By the way, I treated my peppers exactly the same as the tomatoes. Out of 8 pepper plants of the same variety, only one had end of blossom rot. At my ripe age, after gardening for the past 45 years, I finally started writing notes in my 1st gardening journal.
Thank you so much for posting this video and allowing the discussion in the comments. I have learned so much. I’m looking forward to your next experiment. That is one of the great things about science: the results, regardless of whether they are predictable or not, teach us something.
I think the experiment was a total success! You were able to show that the base soil is very important. Fertilizers are great for additional nutrition, but you have to start off with something good. I'd love to see you use the initial soilless mix and add your homemade compost. Understood that everyone's compost will be different, but I'd like to see what that does for a plant. You could make it even more interesting by adding your Jacks 20-20-20 to one of the plants and not to the other. I experiment all the time with my plants. I'm currently growing peppers in a 6" wide x 8" deep x 24" long railing planter - and I've got 3 plants in each pot. I have to water them a little more because of the heat (I'm in GA), but they're doing very well. I've also got 3 gal pots with a tomato plant in each on the same railing (with a string up to the ceiling to train the plants on) and have had a respectable harvest so far. Keep it up!
Is anyone else in the southeast experiencing a huge infestation of Japanese Beetles this year? Neem oil w/Castille soap isn’t helping my plants or trees. I’m treating the ground with Milky Spore in August, but this is insane (we’ve only been here 2 years and it’s so different growing here vs southern Ca. Big bug learning curve here!
@@privateprivate1914 I've only heard mention of it once or twice, but no one, to my knowledge, is having an issue. Use the bags with the pheromone bait in them. Put them well away from the plants they're invading and you'll see a difference. I had them pretty bad when I first moved to this house about 28 years ago, but I haven't seen any in years. I used the bait and it seemed to work really well.
Thank you for the reply! Yes, I have 2 of the bags with pheromone hanging far enough away (and they are filling up), but there are soooo many that I think I’ll need 20+ more bags - they are attacking all of my small, new fruit trees, strawberry bed and veggies too😢
I think that's what I am going to do next year. I'll use the same mix, but I'll add a bag of soil conditioner or cow manure compost to bring the medium to life. Then, I'll stick with the inexpensive MiracleGro products and see what happens. I think that will still tell a good story, but the plants will grow much better.
Every experiment is supposed to have a "control". Your results dont mean much without one. In this case you should have had 2 more pots with the same soil but you dont add any food, water only. You could have had an additional 2 more pots on top of that in which you fed with organic food, be it granular mixed into the medium or water sol. or w/e. Always use a control.
Ya but he said In the beginning plants in the soil he used would die if they only had water. I mean he could have done it just to show you but he seems pretty confident it be a waste of time and materials
@@p1rmcbacon463 Thats the thing. I have grown larger tomato plants to fruit, in 1" cells with no food. His plants should have been massive but for some reason they did horribly. Something went very wrong here. A control may have gone to show that. Maybe another example with plain dirt or something that he didnt feed, would show this too. Assuming that the control would die, is the failure, cuz Io'm pretty sure it would not die at all and even do much better than the other examples.
@@JamesJones-gj1ii Agreed. I prefer using organic fertilizers in my vegetable garden (I grow in raised beds) because they bring so much more life to the soil. I do use synthetic fertilizer (Proven Winners Water Soluble Fertilizer) to water my flowering annuals, but they are in containers on my deck, so soil life isn’t as important.
Yes, and the incompleteness of inexpensive synthesized fertilizers. Products like MiracleGro do work, but only in addition to healthy soil and organics.
I had the worst spring in memory here in NE Texas. So much rain and thought everything would die. I'm not a very experienced garderner, only on my fourth year now. Used cow manure for the first time, as well as worm castings and it changed everything. I have grown Cherokee purple tomatoes every year and have had terrible results. They produced for maybe a month and were done. I put worm castings and bone meal in the planting hole. I also sprayed my plants with aspirin this year, before they went out in the garden. I fertilize with fish fertilizer only, and maybe once a month. It's been hot for a few weeks and my plants are still giving tomatoes. I don't use shade cloth, mainly because I can't afford it, but still have no stressed plants. Maybe I'm just lucky this year.
which you cannot get from miracle-gro . . its just another pharmaceutical attack on Humanity. informed people never use miracle-gro or peat-moss in their land/soil
But I'm guessing the strawberries are growing in living soil, which contains enough nutrients that the weaknesses in the fertilizers don't show. That was my conclusion.
@@TheMillennialGardener the key is diluting the solution, some plants are able to withstand the labeled dosage, but not majority of plants. I have a EC meter and I test the EC level to be safe for my plants.
@@TheMillennialGardener No, people plant amazing gardens in sand and sawdust every year. Where you messed up is you only used fertilizer and not the other micro nutrients that's on you not the fertilizer.
From my understanding, because both coco coir and perlite are completely inert in nature, they don't even have much nutrient retaining capacity. So after fertilizing, anything that runs out the bottom isn't even feeding the plant. And any time the plant is watered between feedings, any nutrients that do manage to stick around are washed out the bottom. It sounds like the poor plants just starved to death. Peat moss (controversy aside) retains a lot more nutrients, so maybe even changing that variable could make a big impact on the experiment?
I think the biggest lesson you could draw from this is how to correctly apply the scientific method with regards to experimentation. It may take some iterations, but hopefully at some point in the future you'll look back fondly at this adventure. You cocked this one up pretty good.
I think it was because your ph was way off because if you just used plain old peat moss that has a ph of 3.0- 4.0 and perlite then your plants won’t be able to uptake nutrients, now even if you said you use the same mix for everything else and have no problems it’s because you add stuff to your mix such as compost and other nutrients that will help stabilize the ph and prevent lockout and the miracle grow will add nutrients but it can’t raise ph enough on its own better yet maintain that which is why organic matter is so important because peat moss by itself just won’t work out it’s only met as a base ingredient. I would have instead used a coco coir brick sense it actually has a ph that is suitable for growing plants on its own then start adding the fertilizer because if the ph ain’t right then you pretty much did all that for nothing
Yes, please re-do the experiment. Suggestion: Add a control plant so we can see how well the independent variable performs vs. doing nothing. My pepper plants have stopped putting on new blossoms and have thus far seemed immune to water soluble fertiziler. I am gong to try shade cloth next (zone 8a Atlanta, every day is 93 degrees).
Yea, I’d like to see this experiment in a more realistic scenario with normal soil. Just use the same soil for each as a base, keep a control, and then fertilize similarly to this experiment.
I had a huge problem like that. It was a fertilizer formula that someone on Instagram posted where you add yeast and sugar and water and a little bit of Epson salt or wood, and I tried it on a couple of my plants and one of them completely died, and another one almost all of them died never again.
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them what it does is keeps the plant from taking up the right nutrients. I've been doing some experiments of my own and haven't been successful thus far. I'll stick to what I learned I lost about 8 plants doing different experiments that I thought was gonna work.
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them because it keeps the plants from taking in the right nutrients it needs. I'll stay to what I learned I lost 8 plants doing experiments with different fertilizer and thus far had no luck. Cause the fertilizer didn't have the other nutrients and micros needed to survive! Lesson learned on my part never again
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them it keeps them from taking in the right nutrients and micros I've done a few experiments and had no luck I'll stick to what I learned never again I lost 8 plants!
Why would that be good? That would only dope the soil with CO2 and possibly even leave them sitting in alcohol. You need oxygen to be available to the soil in order to prevent an anaerobic environment.
I am guessing adding worm castings probably would have helped. To test out the trace mineral theory, you might try using Azomite next time. Heck, I am adding that and worm castings to every container I have to offset cheaper container soils I have purchased in the past. Keep the great videos coming Sir 👊🏻🌻👊🏻
I think you're on the right track with nutritional deficiencies, but I think it's secondary nutrients that are missing not trace nutrients. None of the formulas have any calcium, only the tomato formula has magnesium, and the all purpose and tomato have low levels of sulfur while the bloom booster has virtually no sulfur. The Bloom Booster not having any meaningful Sulfur certainly makes me wonder if that was the reason those plants didn't make it, as Sulfur is very important for plants. It'd be interesting to run the same experiment again but supplement the missing secondary nutrients to see how that changes things.
I agree-it’s notable that there isn’t any Ca & the differences in the Mg and S. (I found this out a couple of years ago when some of my tomatoes got blossom-end rot even though they had been getting a nice weekly drink of 1/2 strength tomato miracle gro…then I read the small print on the boxes!)
Garden experiments are so much fun. Thanks for sharing this one with us. Often what we learn has less to do about growing our garden and more to do with scientific theory and testing our theory. In this case The Millennial Gardener states he wants to learn "What is the best fertilizer and does NPK really matter". But, the study he undertook actually tested "what happens to tomatoes and peppers, placed in an inert growing medium, when given infrequent feedings of various liquid fertilizers. In other words, it's not a valid test of his initial question. It also means there are at least five variables to consider in evaluating the outcome, the plants themselves, the growing medium, the fertilizer being applied, the method of application, and the frequency of application. Given that how do we evaluate the results? Here's one of many possibilities: Those of us that are experienced growers know that an inert growing medium does not provide enough nutrients to a plant to sustain life. We also know that the inert mix he selected drains pretty quickly. Since the method of application was a liquid drench, this means the nutrients drained from the medium fairly quickly. Since the frequency of application was every 14 days, this means that the plants were going for 12 or 13 days with no nutrients at all. So, one possible conclusion is that two weeks of starvation followed by a jolt of nutrients is not sufficient for plants to grow. Given the number of variables, there are other possible explanations for the outcome too, many of which have already suggested. Again, a fun lesson on how to design a scientific experiment . And, now we know why almost every study ends with a conclusion that "further study is required!"
The medium became too acidic. In hydroponics, you need to PH balance the fertilizer liquid mix. That would kill the plants alone, it wouldn’t kill the plants if it was PH balanced.
I don't think this is the case. All my tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, figs, etc. in my shade tunnel are grown in the exact same medium. The difference: I add organic 5-5-5, bone meal, I amend the tops with a few inches of compost, and I mulch them. I don't think this has anything to do with pH, because I had similar results when I used coco coir. I think all this shows is that inexpensive fertilizers like MiracleGro aren't nutritionally complete and it cannot be the only thing you give plants in a synthetic medium.
@@TheMillennialGardener . All the other supplements you added in other plants with the same fertilizer act as a buffer for PH levels that enhance cations. Look up cation exchange capacity (CEC). I enjoy engineering as much as you!!! It is a difficult question to answer but I think that with the input of your followers, some more possibilities are presenting themselves.
My tomatoes the last 2 years were about 10 - 12 feet tall, I was running them as a vine without any lower leaves, mainly 2 stalks each plant of indeterminate. I used a ladder to harvest them! This year, I will run 4 stalks each plant up to 6 feet and then run them down to 1 foot then up again in all 4 directions. Hope that works; I also reduced from 16 plants to 8. My garden is 8X20 feet. Every year it is packed with leaves.
Keep the experiments coming. That’s how we keep open minds and thinking how to move forward with progress. I’m usinf a combo of granular and liquid feed for just extra quick nutrients My opinion (I’m new gardener) is that with inert soil, there can be a few extra factors to consider with liquid feeding like ph, ec and ppm. Some cannabis growers tend to use inert soil with only liquid feedings and they are anal about these things. If I remember correctly, feedings outsize the ph range can lead to nutrient lockout, similarly if the ppm is too high, the plant won’t absorb all the nutrients. I’m learning through others, my failure and if anything I say helps anybody in any possible way, then sweet. If not, I’m just glad to be heard cause I know someone read some of this 😂❤
You are correct. In hydroponics you have to measure everything closely as you described. The EC/PPM would have been far too high. It's actually interesting how long the plants held on...
Another great discussion about soil composition. This is my biggest challenge with growing vegetables consistently year after year. I've made changes in the composition with different additives, and each time, it drastically impacts the growth of my plants. I have never found the best combination, but I have learned much from your educational videos. I said this before, but it's worth repeating: you have a great way of getting right to the point with clear, understandable language. Much appreciated.
Love the experiment. Very educational. I do have a question. How do you recommend we fertilize in the constant heat. If we are watering everyday and plants don’t get time to uptake nutrients before we water them again next day. I hope that makes sense.
Great job, I plan to add some compost to my plants today. By the way you didn’t fail, you succeed in teaching us what not to do. I wonder if you could add compost to the ones that lived and they would take off… give it a shot…
Love your videos, especially the videos that experiments. Experiments are how we learn. If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got. I learned so much with this experiment.
No garden experiment is a failure. The goal of an experiment is learning and this was a great learning experiment. Thanks for running the experiment and posting it. Setting up a reliable experiment requires a lot of work, not just in the set up, but in the follow through.
This is a great experiment. You may not have grown gardens but you are growing gardeners. This information gave us so much information without needing to do the test ourselves. Please continue to do this type of testing.
Yep. Now I know the lower limits of the system where things break. Knowing the breaking point is just as important as knowing how hard you can push things.
Ppl grow hydroponically in pure coir or coir/perlite mixes---or in just water. It is likely that the ferts used in hydro have all the required micros in the mix, though.
Just as it's important to test the upper limits of plants and see how hard we can push them, it's important to test the lower limits and find out where the system fails. This was honestly more enlightening to me than anything I've done in 2024 so far.
out of all the fertlizers I've used, nothing beats good old blood, fish and bone for me. Every so often I just mix some into the top of the soil and water it in, can always see a big difference after I do it too. I don't really care to use specific fetlizer's, I've personally not seen any differerence when I use tomato fertilizer vs the bFB combo during the flowering/fruiting phase.
I agree with most of the stuff we grow (except for crazy crops like corn and watermelons), but I believe it's very important that gardeners run stress tests like this to find out what doesn't work. These plants were sacrificial experiments, and I'm very glad I did this, because it taught me what the lower limits of plants and fertilizers were. I recommend every gardener try to design experiments and test the limits of the system until failure.
@@TheMillennialGardener ey every garden is different. So maybe that applies to how specific fertlizers react to the plants. My soil is fairly clay but not in a crazy way, it'll probably hold onto liquid nutrients more due to that. It also has a lot of fungi popping up and worms mulling around, so it could be why BFB have pretty quick effects for me.
For the last 20 years I've conducted at least two trials every years. I test potting mediums, soil additives, germination mediums and any else that gets me curious. The most similar trial to this one was to test two different potting mediums using Sweet Million tomatoes. One potting mix was Miracle Gro and the other was my homemade concoction that was primarily homemade compost, peat moss, perlite and Gaia Green 4-4-4. Both proved successful but the way they got there was quite different. Miracle Gro took a noticeable lead in size and density of the seedling. After about 3 weeks I thought it would prove the winner. But then, my homemade variety quickly caught up and maybe slightly surpassed the Miracle Gro. It was a good thing to know that I could be successful with either. I should add that I'm not looking for minor differences. At my level of production where I might get (say) 50 pounds of tomatoes one way and 48 (say) pounds another way, that doesn't matter to me. I'm looking for significant differences that I notice by simple observations.
This is why I grow in-ground. So much less to worry about as far as fertilization and watering. I both fertilize and water my plants, but you can get by with doing neither and odds are your plants will produce something. I had a few volunteer tomato plants pop up in my pollinator garden last year that I didn't notice until later in the summer and they produced tomatoes with ZERO intervention from a human. No watering, no fertilizing and no staking and pruning.
well, for one thing... in teh absence of soil micro biome? i doubt the plants were able to uptake most of it. however when growing in hydroponics? which your "sterile media" is closest to? you feed with EVERY watering, at a micro dose. low, but continuus dose of fertilizer (and minerals)
Regarding coco coir, I had heard that salt is used in processing it, but if so, and then you add the micronized salt in the urea fertilizer, it's like double salt. I prefer to add both green and brown broken-down matter to make my soil, and supplement with more of this in this mixed with water to ferment for 2 days, then dilute with water and feed. I have also had good luck with pulverized bananas and egg shells in water to provide a boost of growth. It's like a sugar fix but has potassium and calcium, and potassium helps with heat stress. And yes, I use shade cloth too in zone 6B.
no its not processed in salt the salt is procesed out of the coco so it dont kill the plants and the ph is hard to keep with high salt content they call it buffering
Good morning! first off i appreciate all your content. it has helped me to be a better gardener. this year i have been reworking my garden adding raised beds and sun screen. when i built my raised beds I filled them with 6 inches of rough cut mulch on the bottom 6 inches then added 8 inches of organic compost to them. please note i live in the Missouri Ozarks so i went to Springfield recycle center and got the mulch for $8 a yard and Hansen's tree service for the compost at $40 per yard. i planted my 8 varieties of tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, green beans, sunflowers, okra and summer squash. After about 3 weeks my plants (started from seed ) was very pale green and not growing at all the looked like they were dyeing. i have been gardening for the last 8 years directly in the soil and have had no problem i always add 1/8 cup of 10-10-10 and a table spoon of lime to the holes before i plant my plants and do not fertilize again and we get a large amount of tomatoes. we usually have 15 to 20 tomato plants and this year we have 40 tomato plants. I followed this standard this year also. Anyway looking at the plants i decided i needed to fertilize so i top dressed with a heave doe of 10-10-10 and then started a weekly watering of Miracle Grow tomato fertilizer like you used. all of my plants took off an became dark green ad started to grow. since ten i have kept up the weekly dose of Miracle grow and have again top dressed with 10-10-10. also i have added composted manure. to make a long stoy short after much time on the internet i determined that new compost does not have any nutrients in it as it until it starts breaking down. so i should be in better shape next year. i appreciate your content keep helping us novice gardeners. by the way my wife has demanded all the 36 by 65 ft garden be in raised beds next year :)
All my tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and figs are planted in peat moss and perlite. It's not just for seed starting. Those plants all love it. *But,* I top the containers with a few inches of compost, then mulch, add bone meal and organic 5-5-5, and I blend fish emulsion into my water soluble fertilizers. I don't think the medium had anything to do with the plant failures. I think what this experiment proved was that a $7 box of MiracleGro isn't designed to be the only thing you ever feed a plant. It's a plant booster, not an all-in-one food that gives every plant everything it needs. Now that I know that for sure, I can make some small changes to avoid it next time.
I'm glad i learned alot from you so i did some research over time i use 17 different trace minerals and i add it to peat moss and coca coir to the mix along with some good manure and worm castings and I'll use a water soluble fertilizer once a week my tomato plants are outta control and the watermelons are taking over my garden! What i used is backed by science!
I have a big bag of Azomite that would have done that for me. But, just to be clear, the purpose of my experiment was to test the lower limits of the plants. I didn't want to give them a bunch of stuff to make them succeed. I found a hole in the system, and learning exactly where the system breaks is so important.
@TheMillennialGardener Absolutely and I appreciate you doing that for everyone very educational and a learning experience for sure cause I've learned so much over the last month just binge watching your videos! 👍
I actually consider this a winner. In reading many of the informed comments, they discuss why this experiment appeared to fail. We learn from failures, hopefully. The failures started the conversation on what the problem was. We have all learned.
With all that peat you needed to add calcium to get the ph to the proper levels! I use calcium every year in my soil to keep the acid down. Hope that helps.
Didn't peat moss and perlite make up the medium ? Or was it coco coir ? If peat my guess is ph if coco maybe salt build up .... But it most likely a combination of multiple issues and many theories fit or make sense.
Try again with your normal potting mix then do your experiment with the different fertilizers. I would be interested to know which one did better based on that.
Peat moss is organically inert... but not chemically inert... you need black peat to be as close to chemically inert as possible... Highly decomposed peat will tend to remain more chemically stable as the organic decomposition process has already been carried out. For this reason you want to buy what is commonly known as “black peat” (H7-H10) where microbial activity has already dialed down and the peat moss more closely approaches what we would call an “inert media”. This however does not mean that Peat moss is chemically inert at this point as it does contain as a significant amount of substances that can affect your nutrient solution. One main characteristic of peat is that it’s acidic. This means that the pH of untreated peat will usually be between 3 and 4.5, too low for use in hydroponic applications. Peat is generally amended with calcium carbonate (lime) to make its pH go up and remain there but this process can be ineffective if the peat can still decompose very significantly (if you buy peat with decomposition < H7). This also contributes high amounts of Ca into the media which might lead to nutritional problems if Ca is also applied normally in solution. To alleviate these issues peat is also sometimes treated with lime/dolomite mixtures so that the counter-ions are both Mg and Ca. Alternatively - but more expensively - this problem can be solved by using phosphate buffer solutions that are run through the peat for a significant period of time. A potassium monobasic/dibasic phosphate buffer at a pH of 6.5 with a 100 mM concentration can buffer the peat moss. For this the buffer needs to be applied until the run-off pH out of the peat comes out unchanged. Then tap water should be applied to remove the K/P from the media. Note that this will only work for black peat that’s already gone through most of the decomposition process as lighter peats will simply decompose further and acidify the media again.
I think the pH of peat moss could be a factor. If a plant isn't in ideal pH per that organism, it won't uptake nutrients. I use compost and manure with liquid fertilizer boosts, however I grew hydroponic plants or inert mediums and liquid fertilizers for many years. So, I believe a crucial missing element to your experiment is pH. Test your rain reservoir, then check your mixtures, and then check the pH of your soil medium with your water, and again with your fertilizer-water mix. Lots of people grow tomatoes in hydroponic systems, pH is crucial. If the peat is too acidic, and your rainwater is around only 5.5 , tomatoes will struggle. You need that pH boosted up to 6-7
In my experiance, green beans (bush or pole) HATE any miracle grow. Not that beans need much fertilizer but I use a green stalk and tried liquid fert and it killed all the beans, but the leafy greans did fine 🤷♀️
I am not an expert for sure, but I have been using the Bloom Booster for years. The directions clearly state to add 1/4 teaspoon per gallon, not 1 tablespoon. There are 3 teaspoons in 1 tablespoon. 4 quarter teaspoons in one teaspoon. So, you were giving the plants 12 times the correct dose. Just to be sure I don't over do it, I actually dilute the gallon mixture I prepare by dividing it into 2 gallons.
You are correct in your conclusions, organic fertilizers provide more trace minerals, and also healthy microbiological components. Plants need healthy soil with probiotics and mycorrhizae to process all of the minerals and organic matter.
Fish fertilizer caused my tomato plants to grow 8 to 10 feet high. They're so tall I can't reach them. Worse yet, the green tomatos are the size of watermellons
Geez. They sound awesome! You can run those indeterminate tomatoes sideways once they reach 5 or 6 feet. Would love to have those green tomatoes to cook. Ummmmm.
Alaska 5-1-1 to start and Neptune's 2-3-1 as they bloom. Boom, done. When I start seedlings, I water the tray with a dilute 5-1-1 fish emulsion and then just water. I'll fertilize them once when they go in the ground and then one more time with neptunes when they're done with veg.
I think it would be interesting to see the experiment rerun using a much more intensive feeding schedule. I know of people who use the basic Miracle Grow formula in a hydroponic setup which would only utilize the nutrients provided from the Miracle Grow. Thank you for posting the fail! It was very informative and interesting!
I don't know that any fertilizer comes complete. When you showed us a picture of one of the boxes it did show some micronutrients that were added to the box.
They do a really good job at adding micro-nutrients, but I don't think any processed fertilizer is ever going to be nutritionally complete. I look at them more like a supplement than real food, especially after this video. Sort of like those "In addition to a healthy diet and exercise" commercials. I don't think it can be all you feed them in an otherwise dead medium.
Samsteel is on the right track. Coco coir/perlite would have done better as it would not lower the PH like Peat moss. That being said, the main issue was PH and not a lack of micronutrients. Even the solution was too acidic and needed to likely be PH'd up to 6.0+/- and you would have had success. Soil would have buffered the PH and would not have required adjustment like the inert material does. The experiment would still have worked in Peat moss had you raised the PH of the fertilizer to compensate for the acidity of the moss. Basically, you locked out the ability for the plant to absorb all the different NPK.
The goal was to run a controlled experiment, though. Adding too much supplementation will muddy the results. Next time, I will have to add something to the compost to make up for the nutrients the MiracleGro products lack, but I can't add much more. Maybe a small amount of cow manure compost.
I think this was a brilliant experiment! There are so many folks that try to grow in soil much like what you used. I do learn so much from gardeners that are learning right beside me…yep ☺️ I love the comments from those that have extra knowledge that I can add to my brain bank! I think you are the first Gardner I have seen do this type experiment! Thank you!
So much wrong with your ‘experiment’. You did not test the null hypothesis and requires one , and for your case, two types of controls, as well as replication. Your plants look to have suffered from salt burn (way too much fertilizer). Note the burned leaves and apical buds. You did not test nutrient balance as you claim. Additionally, your potting mix was likely acidic, which alone would probably be ok but it added insult to injury to your poor plants. You have good ideas but need some professional guidance on how to appropriately test you hypotheses. A good Master Gardener’s course or conversations with your county extension team (free advice from professionals with years of trained experience) will help get you to where you are trying to go with this type of testing. Be careful with your claims and recommendations. In this case it’s horticultural malpractice.
It's an old kiddie pool. The bottom is blown out, because those cheap things break down in a season or two in the sun. But, it works great to mix potting soil. It's in really bad shape, though. I'm going to trash it. It's pretty much done 😆
and hills of NC here this year was a complete bust. Only the onions did well. Heat and bugs got the biggest majority. Looking forward to the fall garden.
@@AMBlues That’s exactly what I was thinking too, except he responded to my comment saying that he uses peat moss all the time and that the pH isn’t nearly as low as I thought it was. Oh well. 🤷🏻♂️
Yes Thats what I was thinking too. He never checked the ph of the soil and the water which, even though it was the same in all pots, should have been documented if it was a scientific experiment as it was a factor.
*Great experiment! it was very informative to see just how essential organic matter in the soil is for plants to survive. I'm so happy I used compost in my blueberry potting mixture otherwise I would have been toast... It would be cool if you made a video about what gardeners should use for their blueberry potting mix because when I researched it online everyone had a differnet answer and it was so confusing...* I got inspired to add blueberries to my garden from your videos on blueberries, and I bought the 25 gallon grow bags from your Amazon Store Front too. The potting mixture I used for my highbush blueberries was this: 45% GolfGreen Canadian sphagnum peat moss, 30% compost, 10% miracle grow potting mix 0.21-0.11-0.16, 10% miracle grow perlite 0.07-0.07-0.07, 5% high porosity HP mycorrhizae, and I also added some 4-10-0 GolfGreen bone meal, some jobe's organic 4-4-4, and some eleimental sulfer pellets. It was kind of a guess based on some articles I found online, hopefully it works out well, I'm also using miracle evergreen & acid loving water soluable food to give them a boost until the sulfer pellets kick in. What mixture would you have used? Would love to see a video on this! -From your Nova Scotia Canadian Subscriber :)
This is totally NOT a failed experiment! I agree with your conclusion, AND I think next time you should do a video on reviving the plants so they'll thrive and produce. Hi and hugs to Dale🥰 and thank you for the vid🩷
Notice how the tops leaves have died before the middle/bottom, where the water needs to travel the most distance. If it cant uptake water, it cant uptake nutrients properly. I have used water soluble nutrients with peat/ perlite and coco and perlite at least a dozen times and had completely healthy plants from seed to harvest.
About 15 minutes into your video you nailed the micro ingredients. We bow fish carp. Big carp, 30 inches average size in the winter. They get buried in my grow areas. That is all I use for fertilizer. At the end of the growing season the fish are gone and the bones stay for at least another year for natural bone meal in the soil.
I see you’re getting a lot of criticism for your experiment. I have to say that, as a simple newbie gardener, for me this has been super useful. Thanks for the effort!
New to your channel, thank so much for the videos, they've been great. My dad was diagnosed with cancer and had planted some tomatoes and cucumbers and they would've died if I didn't help take care of and I was very nervous to touch because I usually kill most plants. What helped the most was how to pollinate them, watering them correctly, sun/shade, how to prune and feeding them. This video on your experiment helped a lot because that is seriously what happened to me last time I tried and I gave up. I learned so much that I'm going to try some on my own next season!
I'm growing some MaryJane in nothing but coco coir just using the miracle grow and I started feeding at 10 days. I feed them every day 3 times a day with 1 teaspoon of fertilizer in 1L of water. The plants are 21 days old and they are doing really good I will be doing the same experiment with tomatoes and peppers starting next week.
This is great. It's not a failure. It's a way to grow that doesn't work. Your explanation of nutrients at the beginning is just what I'm working on right now, to begin an in depth study of how food plants work, grow & thrive. My soil mix in SoCal that I figured out is - 1 part Recipe 420, 1 part bagged organic compost, and a guesstimate by "experience?" of bagged topsoil "for a stiffer soil that doesn't dry out too fast, some sphagnum peat moss, pumice to keep soil from compacting too much. Then for granulated long term fertilizers I use G/B 4-4-4 organic, bone meal, gardener lime, and for leeks a good supply of blood meal on top of soil and more bone meal in the root area of the leeks. I use the Miracle Grow fertilizers you show in addition to fish emulsion, liquid kelp, Fox Farms Cal-Mag, Liqinox Grow & Fish Fertilizer. Liquid bone meal. Throw in some worm castings. Grow everything in containers. All my raw beginner failures with blossom end rot last year went away. Grow a bunch of zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, leeks, some determinant tomatoes and they are all working well. Now, I'm going to add in season lettuce following one of your videos. My lettuce venture last year didn't turn out well...... :) This year is such a difference from last year when I started it blows me away. Your teaching style is great. Even me as a relative beginner is getting great results..... I'm going to have to start writing this stuff in a notebook......Hey, what a concept....:) Thanks - have a great grow year...
If you enjoyed this video, please "Like" and share it to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching 🙂TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 The Fertilizer Test Experiment
1:24 NPK Ratio Explained
2:33 MiracleGro Fertilizer Analysis
3:31 The NPK Ratio Theory
4:56 Mixing Water Soluble Fertilizers
5:58 Making Potting Mix And Test Plants
7:53 The Fertilizing Schedule
9:15 How To Fertilize The Test Plants
10:23 Two Weeks Later
11:24 70 Days Later
12:39 Why I Think The Experiment Failed
17:04 My Thoughts On Synthesized Fertilizers
20:17 Adventures With Dale
what about that "miracle gro soil"? I used it to plant grass seed and the grass turned yellow! Must be the same problem - no trace nutrients - good theory! I've been adding mulched grass and that seems to be saving the grass.
Love the pumpkin recipe. Dale is very much loved and spoiled as they should all be. You and Britney are awesome parents. I think your theory sounds very logical, like plants, we need trace minerals along with the vitamins. We could possibly die if we totally lacked some of them as well. What do you about a vegan fertilizer experiment?
Reminds me of the urine VS miracle grow experiment. I'm still hoping you revisit that one with a 1/3 compost mix rather than 100% coir.
Learn the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. But you're right.
I've a question for you.. WOULD it be possible to get srigs of your figs? 3-5 from each tree?? Instead of mowing them?? I used to have a family tree over 100 yrs old but when my dad died I lost the tree. I really want to start with good strong plants. I believe you have good ones..
I'm so grateful that you didn't delete the failed experiment. I find these types of videos more educational and helpful to me as a gardener. Nothing beats a living biome in your soil!
Unlike Laura/Garden Answers who might mention a failed planting only if enough people comment on it, but even then it's very "oh I don't know what happened" followed by a quick shrug & off to the next topic. She's not a gardener..... she's a plant hoarder
This is a failed conclusion to a failed experiment....
So do I. I honestly learned more making this video than I have any other videos this year. I am happy to share the experience with the community.
This is what is so important. Without these honest, fair, and truthful results, any garden video could lead someone to copying it, and having disasterous results without the huge funding to fix it (that some other channels have). Thank you so much. This is as shocking as the Miraclegro vs. Kellogg's results by EpicGardening, and the Miralegro vs urine conclusion from your own channel.
You were basically trying to run a hydroponic dutch bucket system but failed when you added peat moss which is organic and holds on to way too much water . Additionally, it has the potential to significantly change the ph of the medium to very acidic, locking out many nutrients and preventing availability to the plants. You should repeat the experiment with only perlite. It is not organic and won't add anything to the system, unlike peat moss when it breaks down. Set up the same experiment but this time, wash off the dirt from the roots as best as possible and then plant in perlite. Set up a watering schedule for 4-6 times per day for a minute or so and drain to waste. That way you will see the affects from only the fertilizer and not the decomposing peat moss. No offence, but i think your theory of why that experiment failed is way out in left field and has nothing to do with miracle grow not providing various micronutrients. I think it failed due to nutrient lockout and lack of oxygen to the roots.
This 100%
Correct. It’s a hydroponic experiment. Hoocho grows in straight coir without draining. Tons of food. Rerun the Miracle Grow experiment after mastering fundamentals of hydroponics.
I was thinking similar. Ph, ec and ppm probably need to be considered; similarly to inert cannabis grows (I’m a noob)
Bravo. Yeah I think soil that's oversaturated with water has straight up murdered my plants before. It creates an anaerobic environment around the roots so the only things going on biologically are decay.
Whenever a transplant's growth is stalled , or I miss the schedule to take starts out of the cells and transplant into bigger pots or into the ground...I use a very diluted solution of hydro chemicals (tomato blend). This technique has worked flawlessly. If I were to use Miracle Grow instead? Death and Damnation.
The first thing that struck me that made me gasp was at the beginning. For container plants MiracleGro’s dosage is 1/2 TEASPOON per gallon. You used 1 TABLESPOON per gallon, that’s 6 times the recommended dosage.
Miraclegro does say 1 TBS per gallon for outside plants, but as all gardeners know, half the recommendation. Always, always go lighter on fertilizer than manufacturers recommend. You risk root burn with too much.
There may be another factor at play here and it doesn't have anything directly to do with the micros, and you kinda answered it yourself. First you added dissolved fertilizer every 2 weeks into an inert medium. The plants had a feast or famine feeding. The inert media has no nutritional carry over. Any organic such as compost, fish fertilizer etc breaks down slowly, even when pre-digested and continues to feed for many days/weeks after application. That is why when used as a supplement to the liquid fertilizer solution the plants do better.
If you were to ration out the same amount of liquid fertilizer into your daily watering schedule so in 2 weeks the same dose was applied, I say your plants would have done much better.
Hydroponics works the same way with diluted doses applied daily over time and the plants thrive...For your consideration. Happy gardening.
That is another possibility as well.
I think the plants would have had a better shot had I fed them less but a lot more often, but seeing the results of the experiment, I'm very much convinced it was a micro-nutrient deficiency. If you look at the labels at 2:50, they aren't very impressive, especially when you compare them to my big back of Jack's 20-20-20, which contains more things. I'm going to have to re-structure the experiment to account for these missing micros/secondary macro's. I think MiracleGro is less expensive than Jack's and other water soluble fertilizers for a reason. They don't have the trace nutrient content.
@@TheMillennialGardener You should be able to identify exactly which micronutrient deficiency they had as the symptoms are quite varied. You can't because that's not what caused your plants to die. As an elder millennial (born in 82) I probably had more experience as an 18 year old growing weed in my basement with miracle grow potting mix and miracle grow 15-30-15 alone than you do now. I used the small scoop per gallon to fertilize (not feed because plants eat light, I don't say I'm feeding myself when I take a vitamin) If you use a huge dose of fertilizer like you did you better be damn sure the soil never dries out at all because that will concentrate the salts and burn your plants.
But go ahead and disregard my comment like you're doing with everyone else because you did your research and noticed there are more ingredients in one brand than another. A lot of those extra micronutrients are added in hydro formulations because it's common to use RO water, tap water has plenty of micros. Peat moss and coco coir are technically compost and have trace minerals in them as well.
I grow in inert material (coco+perlite) and if I did not water with fertilizer every time I would have some serious deficiencies. The work around to that would be slow release granules but even with that the results aren't so great.
Peat has a good cation exchange capacity. It helps to use dolomite lime as a pH buffer. If you are not adding compost for micronutrients, it is important to fertilize with hydroponic solution that contains the full range of usable nutrients.
The lesson I draw from this is that you can't go wrong with quality topsoil and compost as a healthful basis for plant growth.
What I think I learned is that $7 boxes of MiracleGro aren't enough to satisfy the needs of plants. They work great to boost plants when given supplemental organics and healthy soil, but they're not enough on their own. From now on, I'll look at them more like a supplement than actual food.
@@TheMillennialGardener you can't draw that conclusion from this experiment. I'm pretty sure those products aren't meant to be used in a nearly inert medium.
Remember too that we don't "feed" plants. They make their own food. We provide the nutrients they need to make that food. And technically plants make that food from carbon hydrogen and oxygen (pretty much from the air).
@@TheMillennialGardener That's the wrong conclusion to reach
I think that what you discovered is what I've believed and practiced for years. Fertilizers are simply an ammendment that should only be used if your soil is lacking necessary nutrients and you want instant results. When building soil those ammendments can be sourced naturally and are superior to the commercial NPK fertilizers. We always tended our compost heaps and supplemented beds with organic mushroom compost from local growers. Long term this is the only way to go in my opinion. I know too many gardeners who go the synthetic and even organic fertilizer route and the long term results are less than desirable.
@@JohnJohn-wr1jo Yep. I know a place where digested sludge from a wastewater treatment plant is dumped. The tomatoes and other vegetables growing there are absolute giant and lush. Too bad its human waste with unknown metals contamination.
My challenge as a retired person is to keep the garden free. I rely on compost and i compost everything. My yields are plenty for me.
That's my formula to, keep it simple.
I've been fermenting weeds from my garden. Two weeks and smelly but THEE best. I always have enough for that and just started up my composting bins. I was converted by watching Charles Dowdy here on YT.
Check your local recycling center/landfill or county transfer station. Often times, they offer free or very inexpensive load-your-own mulch or compost.
Yes I get mine free from a nursery by my house!@@TheMillennialGardener
I’ve done that, but no more because of potential weed killer and other bad stuff in compost from unknown sources.
Fourth generation Oregon farmer here. ANY fertilizer with an NPK above 5-5-5 is TOO HOT!! Bigger numbers do NOT mean better results. I've used many kinds of fertilizer, and I ALWAYS reduce it with at least 30% more water. You can't "force feed" plants to make them grow better. If they need more, they'll let you know. Trust your plants, not a chemical factory!!
Glad you still posted it, there is always something to learn in the garden!
The soil got too high of a fertilizer concentration is my guess
Not at all. I believe the exact opposite is true. There wasn't nearly enough food and nutrients. This is explained at the end of the video.
@@TheMillennialGardener ok thanks , I just got to the end of the video
@@TheMillennialGardeneryou can grow in pure peat moss and you'll only notice a lack of nutrients by the leaves turning lighter and lighter green and becoming weaker and weaker of a plant , those fertilizers are the problem. Worm castings contain all the needed nutrients , you can just add worm castings to your soil and you'll get purely benifets without any worry of putting to much, if you put 20 grains of the average store baught fetilizizer in a pot you'll kill 99% of plants , those fertilizers should only be used in outdoor soil watered in for a yr before you plant anything, direct use fries plants
@@TheMillennialGardener Even though they were grown outdoors I think you should have used the indoor tiny side of the spoon because they were grown in pots. Good luck next time with the manure compost and maybe put out a pot with 1/4 strength of this fertilizer mix to prove me wrong. Consider looking up EC tables for hydroponic growing solutions and comparing it to what you ended up making. Even though you were not trying to your use of an inert grow medium took you from gardening into hydroponics and tomatoes require a 2 to 3 dS m-1 strength nutrient solution.
@@TheMillennialGardeneralso peat moss and coco are both rly bad , coco contains tons of salt that can't be removed and kills plants, peat is extremely acidic so all store baught peat is treated with calcium carbonate and when the calcium is flushed out it becomes deadly to most plants , worm castings contain everything a plant needs and is the only median that you can use 100% as your median and get perfect harvests that are super large fruits. There is no such thing as an inert median that plants can grow in like soil , perlite won't work by itself as a median and neither will rock wall or clay pellets, funnily enough clay itself is the only completely inert median in nature but it has to be made into pellets for it to be well draining and than it's not able to hold enough water
As someone who does nutrient IV therapies in humans, I feel it’s similar-one cannot take a big concentration of any nutrient. Minerals often share channels and too much of one will block absorption of others. You can cause cardiac arrest by taking too much potassium, or magnesium, as it crowds out calcium which shares the same uptake channel (e.g. tunnel)
i basically found you last week but wish i found you years ago, youre a tremendous well of knowledge and what i love is you giive us the disasters and not just the bounties....because where i live....its a lot of trial and error and a lot of disasters with a wee bit of bounties! i just learned so much from this video , thank you so so much!!!
I've used Miracle Grow on my plants for 60 years along with other organic and non organic fertilizers. I worked for a huge greenhouse back in the early 1970's, which supplied all kinds of flowers to many of the florists in the whole valley. They used a water soluble fertilizer every time they watered their plants, but they only used half of the amount of fertilizer. I use miracle grow on my garden and grow tomatoes 10 feet high with a basket of tomatoes per plant. I know from years of gardening that potted plants will never do as good as plants grown in the garden.
Sure, I agree, plants are always going to grow better in real soil. But this was an experiment, not plants that were actually going in the garden. Seeing the results, I'll make some modifications and re-run the experiment.
A commercial Gardener taught me the same thing and I use mine half strength also, on potted plants and what's in the garden.
@@kerryalbritton6532 I feel like if you were going to use half strength in this experiment where he used coco coir instead of potting soil/garden mix/compost/etc, he would most definitely need to feed more frequently.
They used half strength so they don’t grow.
I use full strength in coco every day.
You can’t just sprinkle or use a spoon.You need a scale and a meter to fertilize like this.
I promise that my tomatoes in bags grow bigger,better,and definitely fruit more.
I got over 350 tomatoes on one plant of Amish paste
@@TheMillennialGardener
Get a tester if you want to fertilize like that.
Guess the poison is always on the dose, love your videos man. No other gardener challanges old traditions like you do. Your take on the prunning aspect was mind blowin' 🤯
I think his growth medium was set up to fail from the start. You can't grow hydroponic in soil. It's a straight up anaerobic environment which only kills and decays plants.
This is how I learn to be a better gardener. I like running these experiments to see what happens. It's the only way we'll know for sure. It's not just about testing the upper limits of plants. It's also about trying to break them to see what makes them fail. I learned more from this experiment than anything else I've done so far in 2024. I'm glad to share it with everyone.
@@TheMillennialGardener That's definitely the right spirit to have with a gardening RUclips channel. Thanks for sharing your results.
I find pruning not to be as detrimental as you think. I have natural pruners in deer, rabbits, hail, and frost, which have all knocked back my plants, but the strong survive and, in most cases, thrive.
Personally I thank you for both the success & “failure” videos. I’m a beginner gardener (been gardening for about 3 years) & continue to struggle with my garden. I learn more each year from others as well as my own experience in the garden from year to year. And I think I learn more from the “failures” than from what was done right. So keep it up. I appreciate all of the experiences that I can learn from. Besides experimenting is fun and educational & I’m definitely all about learning. And I love how you include clips with Dale at the end of all your videos. I have 3 doggos who regularly join me in the garden. Happy gardening everyone!🥒🥕🌻
I almost didn't bother watching this video, because I already knew how it was going to finish. Many of your commentators have already explained why it killed the plants, so I won't elaborate on that subject.
I would suggest that you do a nutrient demonstration using only distilled water and separate macro and micro nutrients to show the effect of nutrient deficiencies.
I realize this may be too 'sciencey' for your channel, but it's a worthwhile demonstration. Having seen this nearly 40 years ago with tomato plants has left an indelible impression on me regarding nutrient limitations. I think many of your followers would be surprised at the results, as was I.
Thanks for taking the time to make/post this video.
I think it's awesome that you did this experiment. Every gardener experiences a failure, and this helps us to understand what a contributing factor might be. This is great information to have.
Dang man, those over-wintered peppers look more like small trees. Amazing.
Those are actually pepper plants! I'm looking to do the same with mine so hopefully they end up like that someday.
@@NicolaiAAA You're right, I guess I had tomatoes on my mind 😂
I have datil and tabasco pepper plants 10 years old that have trunks. Including a Carolina reaper that is 4 years old and has a woody trunk also. I live in Florida and protect them from our occasional freezing temps.
It's incredible. I am going to try to get that one pepper to Year 10 😆 What's amazing is they produce *all winter long!* The production is lower, and they don't get nearly as spicy as they do during the warm weather, but I truly harvest them year round.
Yeah they look lovely! I would love a video about these plants, how do you prune them and overwinter them, how do you prune you bell peppers in the beginning for more growth later on?
I love that you didn’t scrap this video and I love that. We all learn something new and I appreciate the time it takes to do these experiments but I felt I learned something new and I’m a big user of miracle, but I will be changing over to the jobes organic soon.
I'm glad the video provided some insight.
As far as I remember, peat moss is used to lower the ph of the soil. I guess tomatoes don't like such an acidic environment.
Tomatoes like acidic soil. And the peat moss you get these days doesn’t really have that low of pH. And the science behind peat moss and studies have shown that the lowering of pH caused by peat moss is totally diminished in a week’s time. Coco peat also isn’t peat moss and the pH range pf coco peat is inline with what tomatoes want.
I use peat moss for Blueberries, works awesome for helping acidity the soil.
Thought it was only sphagnum Peat moss for acidity
Tomatoes love an acidic environment. I don't think the issue is with peat moss. All my potted plants, including all the giant tomatoes under my shade cover, are grown in the exact same mix. The only difference is that I add compost and mulch on top, and I fortify the soil with bone meal and organic 5-5-5. I think that MiracleGro products are just not designed to be the *only* thing you give your plants. They're made to enhance growth, not be the only thing given.
@@1165slugman If you do the research most of American potting soils based on peat moss have a relatively neutral pH. It has nothing to do with soil pH. Coco peat has been an issue for years in the nursery trade. Countries like the UK that have banned sphagnum peat moss are struggling with using Coco peat. It’s an okay media if you mix it in soil blends. By itself it’s horrible solo media.
I love your experiments. Thank you for taking the time to make those kind of videos as they are very important. Last Fall, I emptied my matured compost and dug it into my veggies beds. In March, I started my heirloom tomatoes (from my saved seeds) in a sterile potting soil intended for indoor plants, rather than in a seed starting soil. As soon as the first true leaves appeared, I started feeding them with half of the recommended doze of Miracle Grow water soluble 20-20-20 fertilizer. Later, I transferred the seedlings into 750 g yogurt containers (with drainage holes). I added some Miracle potting soil mixed with a bit of bone meal. By now, the seedlings did not fit under my grow lights, so I placed them inside my flimsy cold frame. When overnight frost was forecasted, I brought them indoors for the night and took them back out in the morning. This back and forth was going on for about two weeks. After the last frost date, I was ready to plant them into the ground. I put a handful of pelleted chicken manure, that contained calcium into each planting hole, lightly dusted the entire bed with dolomite calcium and watered each plant with transplanting fluid to prevent transplanting shock. Now, I continue to feed them every 10 - 14 days with Miracle Grow water soluble 20-20-20. My indeterminate heirloom tomatoes are growing strong 1' thick main stem and are 10 feet tall. I am harvesting fruit, that is noticeably bigger than it in the previous years. I believe that I have finally discovered the winning combination of organic + synthetic, from seed germination to harvest. By the way, I treated my peppers exactly the same as the tomatoes. Out of 8 pepper plants of the same variety, only one had end of blossom rot. At my ripe age, after gardening for the past 45 years, I finally started writing notes in my 1st gardening journal.
Love the honesty makes me love this channel even more
Thank you so much for posting this video and allowing the discussion in the comments. I have learned so much. I’m looking forward to your next experiment. That is one of the great things about science: the results, regardless of whether they are predictable or not, teach us something.
I think the experiment was a total success! You were able to show that the base soil is very important. Fertilizers are great for additional nutrition, but you have to start off with something good.
I'd love to see you use the initial soilless mix and add your homemade compost. Understood that everyone's compost will be different, but I'd like to see what that does for a plant. You could make it even more interesting by adding your Jacks 20-20-20 to one of the plants and not to the other.
I experiment all the time with my plants. I'm currently growing peppers in a 6" wide x 8" deep x 24" long railing planter - and I've got 3 plants in each pot. I have to water them a little more because of the heat (I'm in GA), but they're doing very well. I've also got 3 gal pots with a tomato plant in each on the same railing (with a string up to the ceiling to train the plants on) and have had a respectable harvest so far.
Keep it up!
Is anyone else in the southeast experiencing a huge infestation of Japanese Beetles this year? Neem oil w/Castille soap isn’t helping my plants or trees. I’m treating the ground with Milky Spore in August, but this is insane (we’ve only been here 2 years and it’s so different growing here vs southern Ca. Big bug learning curve here!
@@privateprivate1914 I've only heard mention of it once or twice, but no one, to my knowledge, is having an issue. Use the bags with the pheromone bait in them. Put them well away from the plants they're invading and you'll see a difference. I had them pretty bad when I first moved to this house about 28 years ago, but I haven't seen any in years. I used the bait and it seemed to work really well.
Thank you for the reply! Yes, I have 2 of the bags with pheromone hanging far enough away (and they are filling up), but there are soooo many that I think I’ll need 20+ more bags - they are attacking all of my small, new fruit trees, strawberry bed and veggies too😢
I think that's what I am going to do next year. I'll use the same mix, but I'll add a bag of soil conditioner or cow manure compost to bring the medium to life. Then, I'll stick with the inexpensive MiracleGro products and see what happens. I think that will still tell a good story, but the plants will grow much better.
@@privateprivate1914I’ve seen alot of posts from gardeners all over, complaining about them. Esp. The northern east coast.
I'm glad you filmed this and posted, a lot to learn from it and from the responses. Keep up the good work
Every experiment is supposed to have a "control". Your results dont mean much without one. In this case you should have had 2 more pots with the same soil but you dont add any food, water only. You could have had an additional 2 more pots on top of that in which you fed with organic food, be it granular mixed into the medium or water sol. or w/e. Always use a control.
How tedious. You ain't coming to my party.
@@TNorin your party sucks .
Ya but he said In the beginning plants in the soil he used would die if they only had water. I mean he could have done it just to show you but he seems pretty confident it be a waste of time and materials
@@p1rmcbacon463 Thats the thing. I have grown larger tomato plants to fruit, in 1" cells with no food. His plants should have been massive but for some reason they did horribly. Something went very wrong here. A control may have gone to show that. Maybe another example with plain dirt or something that he didnt feed, would show this too. Assuming that the control would die, is the failure, cuz Io'm pretty sure it would not die at all and even do much better than the other examples.
Thrive maybe not but die? Not unless he is using toxic soil.@@p1rmcbacon463
I think this highlights the importance of a good micro biome of the soil.
@@JamesJones-gj1ii Agreed. I prefer using organic fertilizers in my vegetable garden (I grow in raised beds) because they bring so much more life to the soil. I do use synthetic fertilizer (Proven Winners Water Soluble Fertilizer) to water my flowering annuals, but they are in containers on my deck, so soil life isn’t as important.
Yes, and the incompleteness of inexpensive synthesized fertilizers. Products like MiracleGro do work, but only in addition to healthy soil and organics.
I had the worst spring in memory here in NE Texas. So much rain and thought everything would die. I'm not a very experienced garderner, only on my fourth year now. Used cow manure for the first time, as well as worm castings and it changed everything. I have grown Cherokee purple tomatoes every year and have had terrible results. They produced for maybe a month and were done. I put worm castings and bone meal in the planting hole. I also sprayed my plants with aspirin this year, before they went out in the garden. I fertilize with fish fertilizer only, and maybe once a month. It's been hot for a few weeks and my plants are still giving tomatoes. I don't use shade cloth, mainly because I can't afford it, but still have no stressed plants. Maybe I'm just lucky this year.
Oh, and I haven't had a single pest on my tomatoes this year. Last year they were devoured by leaf-footed bugs, and I had tomato horn worms....
which you cannot get from miracle-gro . . its just another pharmaceutical attack on Humanity. informed people never use miracle-gro or peat-moss in their land/soil
I always dilute it to half of the labeled dosage. I use miracle grow on my strawberries and hydroponic system, and they are totally fine.
But I'm guessing the strawberries are growing in living soil, which contains enough nutrients that the weaknesses in the fertilizers don't show. That was my conclusion.
@@TheMillennialGardener the key is diluting the solution, some plants are able to withstand the labeled dosage, but not majority of plants. I have a EC meter and I test the EC level to be safe for my plants.
What hydroponic system are you using? I'm researching the Kratky method, and they don't recommend Miracle Gro All Purpose.
@@TheMillennialGardener No, people plant amazing gardens in sand and sawdust every year. Where you messed up is you only used fertilizer and not the other micro nutrients that's on you not the fertilizer.
@@chrisp308that’s exactly what he concluded at the end.
You should have pulled the plants and showed us the roots. I suspect they were minimal.
They weren't bad. I pulled the plants and re-used the potting mix to up-pot some fig trees.
Hey man. Just wanted to say I loved the experimental style of this video.
I'm very glad to hear it was worthwhile to conduct!
From my understanding, because both coco coir and perlite are completely inert in nature, they don't even have much nutrient retaining capacity. So after fertilizing, anything that runs out the bottom isn't even feeding the plant. And any time the plant is watered between feedings, any nutrients that do manage to stick around are washed out the bottom. It sounds like the poor plants just starved to death. Peat moss (controversy aside) retains a lot more nutrients, so maybe even changing that variable could make a big impact on the experiment?
I think the biggest lesson you could draw from this is how to correctly apply the scientific method with regards to experimentation. It may take some iterations, but hopefully at some point in the future you'll look back fondly at this adventure.
You cocked this one up pretty good.
I think it was because your ph was way off because if you just used plain old peat moss that has a ph of 3.0- 4.0 and perlite then your plants won’t be able to uptake nutrients, now even if you said you use the same mix for everything else and have no problems it’s because you add stuff to your mix such as compost and other nutrients that will help stabilize the ph and prevent lockout and the miracle grow will add nutrients but it can’t raise ph enough on its own better yet maintain that which is why organic matter is so important because peat moss by itself just won’t work out it’s only met as a base ingredient. I would have instead used a coco coir brick sense it actually has a ph that is suitable for growing plants on its own then start adding the fertilizer because if the ph ain’t right then you pretty much did all that for nothing
Yes, please re-do the experiment. Suggestion: Add a control plant so we can see how well the independent variable performs vs. doing nothing. My pepper plants have stopped putting on new blossoms and have thus far seemed immune to water soluble fertiziler. I am gong to try shade cloth next (zone 8a Atlanta, every day is 93 degrees).
Yea, I’d like to see this experiment in a more realistic scenario with normal soil. Just use the same soil for each as a base, keep a control, and then fertilize similarly to this experiment.
The shade cloth will help immensely. It makes a huge difference in this weather. I’m in E TN. So I understand the pain lol
I had a huge problem like that. It was a fertilizer formula that someone on Instagram posted where you add yeast and sugar and water and a little bit of Epson salt or wood, and I tried it on a couple of my plants and one of them completely died, and another one almost all of them died never again.
do you think you put to much on? i saw that yeast and sugar is good but scared to try it
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them what it does is keeps the plant from taking up the right nutrients. I've been doing some experiments of my own and haven't been successful thus far. I'll stick to what I learned I lost about 8 plants doing different experiments that I thought was gonna work.
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them because it keeps the plants from taking in the right nutrients it needs. I'll stay to what I learned I lost 8 plants doing experiments with different fertilizer and thus far had no luck. Cause the fertilizer didn't have the other nutrients and micros needed to survive! Lesson learned on my part never again
@@lorikrafft8197 There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar is conducive to plant health. On the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them it keeps them from taking in the right nutrients and micros I've done a few experiments and had no luck I'll stick to what I learned never again I lost 8 plants!
Why would that be good? That would only dope the soil with CO2 and possibly even leave them sitting in alcohol. You need oxygen to be available to the soil in order to prevent an anaerobic environment.
I am guessing adding worm castings probably would have helped. To test out the trace mineral theory, you might try using Azomite next time. Heck, I am adding that and worm castings to every container I have to offset cheaper container soils I have purchased in the past.
Keep the great videos coming Sir 👊🏻🌻👊🏻
I think you're on the right track with nutritional deficiencies, but I think it's secondary nutrients that are missing not trace nutrients. None of the formulas have any calcium, only the tomato formula has magnesium, and the all purpose and tomato have low levels of sulfur while the bloom booster has virtually no sulfur.
The Bloom Booster not having any meaningful Sulfur certainly makes me wonder if that was the reason those plants didn't make it, as Sulfur is very important for plants.
It'd be interesting to run the same experiment again but supplement the missing secondary nutrients to see how that changes things.
I was thinking this and was going to comment the same thing.
I agree-it’s notable that there isn’t any Ca & the differences in the Mg and S. (I found this out a couple of years ago when some of my tomatoes got blossom-end rot even though they had been getting a nice weekly drink of 1/2 strength tomato miracle gro…then I read the small print on the boxes!)
Another thing to consider is that coco coir often has too much salt. That may be an issue here.
I always use at half strength. I have use the Mittleider fertilizer with great success in the past.
Garden experiments are so much fun. Thanks for sharing this one with us.
Often what we learn has less to do about growing our garden and more to do with scientific theory and testing our theory. In this case The Millennial Gardener states he wants to learn "What is the best fertilizer and does NPK really matter". But, the study he undertook actually tested "what happens to tomatoes and peppers, placed in an inert growing medium, when given infrequent feedings of various liquid fertilizers. In other words, it's not a valid test of his initial question.
It also means there are at least five variables to consider in evaluating the outcome, the plants themselves, the growing medium, the fertilizer being applied, the method of application, and the frequency of application. Given that how do we evaluate the results? Here's one of many possibilities: Those of us that are experienced growers know that an inert growing medium does not provide enough nutrients to a plant to sustain life. We also know that the inert mix he selected drains pretty quickly. Since the method of application was a liquid drench, this means the nutrients drained from the medium fairly quickly. Since the frequency of application was every 14 days, this means that the plants were going for 12 or 13 days with no nutrients at all. So, one possible conclusion is that two weeks of starvation followed by a jolt of nutrients is not sufficient for plants to grow.
Given the number of variables, there are other possible explanations for the outcome too, many of which have already suggested.
Again, a fun lesson on how to design a scientific experiment . And, now we know why almost every study ends with a conclusion that "further study is required!"
The medium became too acidic. In hydroponics, you need to PH balance the fertilizer liquid mix. That would kill the plants alone, it wouldn’t kill the plants if it was PH balanced.
I don't think this is the case. All my tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, figs, etc. in my shade tunnel are grown in the exact same medium. The difference: I add organic 5-5-5, bone meal, I amend the tops with a few inches of compost, and I mulch them. I don't think this has anything to do with pH, because I had similar results when I used coco coir. I think all this shows is that inexpensive fertilizers like MiracleGro aren't nutritionally complete and it cannot be the only thing you give plants in a synthetic medium.
@@TheMillennialGardener I guess compost can alter below soil ph too, idk but it will be really cool to test all of this theories.
@@TheMillennialGardener . All the other supplements you added in other plants with the same fertilizer act as a buffer for PH levels that enhance cations. Look up cation exchange capacity (CEC). I enjoy engineering as much as you!!! It is a difficult question to answer but I think that with the input of your followers, some more possibilities are presenting themselves.
@@TheMillennialGardener . Recommend reading is Soil Science for Gardeners. You will love it. Audio on Audible as well.
Coir is actually alkaline and can buffer pH incredibly well. These were just hungry.
My tomatoes the last 2 years were about 10 - 12 feet tall, I was running them as a vine without any lower leaves, mainly 2 stalks each plant of indeterminate. I used a ladder to harvest them! This year, I will run 4 stalks each plant up to 6 feet and then run them down to 1 foot then up again in all 4 directions. Hope that works; I also reduced from 16 plants to 8. My garden is 8X20 feet. Every year it is packed with leaves.
Keep the experiments coming. That’s how we keep open minds and thinking how to move forward with progress.
I’m usinf a combo of granular and liquid feed for just extra quick nutrients
My opinion (I’m new gardener) is that with inert soil, there can be a few extra factors to consider with liquid feeding like ph, ec and ppm. Some cannabis growers tend to use inert soil with only liquid feedings and they are anal about these things. If I remember correctly, feedings outsize the ph range can lead to nutrient lockout, similarly if the ppm is too high, the plant won’t absorb all the nutrients.
I’m learning through others, my failure and if anything I say helps anybody in any possible way, then sweet. If not, I’m just glad to be heard cause I know someone read some of this 😂❤
You are correct. In hydroponics you have to measure everything closely as you described. The EC/PPM would have been far too high. It's actually interesting how long the plants held on...
Another great discussion about soil composition. This is my biggest challenge with growing vegetables consistently year after year. I've made changes in the composition with different additives, and each time, it drastically impacts the growth of my plants. I have never found the best combination, but I have learned much from your educational videos. I said this before, but it's worth repeating: you have a great way of getting right to the point with clear, understandable language. Much appreciated.
Love the experiment. Very educational. I do have a question. How do you recommend we fertilize in the constant heat. If we are watering everyday and plants don’t get time to uptake nutrients before we water them again next day. I hope that makes sense.
Increase frequency of feeding and cut the concentration to half strength
Great job, I plan to add some compost to my plants today. By the way you didn’t fail, you succeed in teaching us what not to do. I wonder if you could add compost to the ones that lived and they would take off… give it a shot…
try the experiment again with compost
That was my conclusion at the end of the video. But it's probably too late in the year to start all over again, so I'll have to wait until next year.
I'm do glad you posted this! It wasn't a failure if we still learn from it 💡
Love your videos, especially the videos that experiments. Experiments are how we learn. If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got. I learned so much with this experiment.
No garden experiment is a failure. The goal of an experiment is learning and this was a great learning experiment. Thanks for running the experiment and posting it. Setting up a reliable experiment requires a lot of work, not just in the set up, but in the follow through.
The plant post-mortem ... we've all been here 😭
This is a great experiment. You may not have grown gardens but you are growing gardeners. This information gave us so much information without needing to do the test ourselves. Please continue to do this type of testing.
These are the gardening videos I like to see. Experiments are the best way to learn and you did one for me, awesome man!
Yep. Now I know the lower limits of the system where things break. Knowing the breaking point is just as important as knowing how hard you can push things.
@@TheMillennialGardener Agreed brother! 🤝
Ppl grow hydroponically in pure coir or coir/perlite mixes---or in just water. It is likely that the ferts used in hydro have all the required micros in the mix, though.
Thank you for being our brave Gardener! Always learn something! That's what sharing is all about. ❤❤ to our sweet "boss dog".
Just as it's important to test the upper limits of plants and see how hard we can push them, it's important to test the lower limits and find out where the system fails. This was honestly more enlightening to me than anything I've done in 2024 so far.
out of all the fertlizers I've used, nothing beats good old blood, fish and bone for me. Every so often I just mix some into the top of the soil and water it in, can always see a big difference after I do it too. I don't really care to use specific fetlizer's, I've personally not seen any differerence when I use tomato fertilizer vs the bFB combo during the flowering/fruiting phase.
I agree with most of the stuff we grow (except for crazy crops like corn and watermelons), but I believe it's very important that gardeners run stress tests like this to find out what doesn't work. These plants were sacrificial experiments, and I'm very glad I did this, because it taught me what the lower limits of plants and fertilizers were. I recommend every gardener try to design experiments and test the limits of the system until failure.
@@TheMillennialGardener ey every garden is different. So maybe that applies to how specific fertlizers react to the plants. My soil is fairly clay but not in a crazy way, it'll probably hold onto liquid nutrients more due to that. It also has a lot of fungi popping up and worms mulling around, so it could be why BFB have pretty quick effects for me.
For the last 20 years I've conducted at least two trials every years. I test potting mediums, soil additives, germination mediums and any else that gets me curious.
The most similar trial to this one was to test two different potting mediums using Sweet Million tomatoes. One potting mix was Miracle Gro and the other was my homemade concoction that was primarily homemade compost, peat moss, perlite and Gaia Green 4-4-4.
Both proved successful but the way they got there was quite different. Miracle Gro took a noticeable lead in size and density of the seedling. After about 3 weeks I thought it would prove the winner. But then, my homemade variety quickly caught up and maybe slightly surpassed the Miracle Gro. It was a good thing to know that I could be successful with either.
I should add that I'm not looking for minor differences. At my level of production where I might get (say) 50 pounds of tomatoes one way and 48 (say) pounds another way, that doesn't matter to me. I'm looking for significant differences that I notice by simple observations.
Thank you for sharing. You are correct we learn from failures as well as success.
You're welcome!
Every time we learn something - it’s a success. The pumpkin pancakes for Dale looked very good. 😊
This is why I grow in-ground. So much less to worry about as far as fertilization and watering. I both fertilize and water my plants, but you can get by with doing neither and odds are your plants will produce something. I had a few volunteer tomato plants pop up in my pollinator garden last year that I didn't notice until later in the summer and they produced tomatoes with ZERO intervention from a human. No watering, no fertilizing and no staking and pruning.
well, for one thing... in teh absence of soil micro biome? i doubt the plants were able to uptake most of it.
however
when growing in hydroponics? which your "sterile media" is closest to? you feed with EVERY watering, at a micro dose. low, but continuus dose of fertilizer (and minerals)
I agree, there was no microbiome for the plants. Dead soil = dead plants
Yes! I agree.
It's synthetic nutrients, the plant could uptake it with or without roots, the microbiome wasnt the issue.
You are spot on. It's the same reason that your can't use them in hydroponics. Those are designed assuming there will be trace nutrients
Regarding coco coir, I had heard that salt is used in processing it, but if so, and then you add the micronized salt in the urea fertilizer, it's like double salt. I prefer to add both green and brown broken-down matter to make my soil, and supplement with more of this in this mixed with water to ferment for 2 days, then dilute with water and feed. I have also had good luck with pulverized bananas and egg shells in water to provide a boost of growth. It's like a sugar fix but has potassium and calcium, and potassium helps with heat stress. And yes, I use shade cloth too in zone 6B.
no its not processed in salt the salt is procesed out of the coco so it dont kill the plants and the ph is hard to keep with high salt content
they call it buffering
Good morning! first off i appreciate all your content. it has helped me to be a better gardener.
this year i have been reworking my garden adding raised beds and sun screen. when i built my raised beds I filled them with 6 inches of rough cut mulch on the bottom 6 inches then added 8 inches of organic compost to them. please note i live in the Missouri Ozarks so i went to Springfield recycle center and got the mulch for $8 a yard and Hansen's tree service for the compost at $40 per yard. i planted my 8 varieties of tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, green beans, sunflowers, okra and summer squash. After about 3 weeks my plants (started from seed )
was very pale green and not growing at all the looked like they were dyeing.
i have been gardening for the last 8 years directly in the soil and have had no problem i always add 1/8 cup of 10-10-10 and a table spoon of lime to the holes before i plant my plants and do not fertilize again and we get a large amount of tomatoes. we usually have 15 to 20 tomato plants and this year we have 40 tomato plants. I followed this standard this year also.
Anyway looking at the plants i decided i needed to fertilize so i top dressed with a heave doe of 10-10-10 and then started a weekly watering of Miracle Grow tomato fertilizer like you used.
all of my plants took off an became dark green ad started to grow. since ten i have kept up the weekly dose of Miracle grow and have again top dressed with 10-10-10. also i have added composted manure. to make a long stoy short after much time on the internet i determined that new compost does not have any nutrients in it as it until it starts breaking down. so i should be in better shape next year.
i appreciate your content keep helping us novice gardeners. by the way my wife has demanded all the 36 by 65 ft garden be in raised beds next year :)
Peat moss and perlite is for seed starting.
All my tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and figs are planted in peat moss and perlite. It's not just for seed starting. Those plants all love it. *But,* I top the containers with a few inches of compost, then mulch, add bone meal and organic 5-5-5, and I blend fish emulsion into my water soluble fertilizers. I don't think the medium had anything to do with the plant failures. I think what this experiment proved was that a $7 box of MiracleGro isn't designed to be the only thing you ever feed a plant. It's a plant booster, not an all-in-one food that gives every plant everything it needs. Now that I know that for sure, I can make some small changes to avoid it next time.
The experiment didn't fail, it just gave results you weren't expecting. Thank you for reporting the results.
I'm glad i learned alot from you so i did some research over time i use 17 different trace minerals and i add it to peat moss and coca coir to the mix along with some good manure and worm castings and I'll use a water soluble fertilizer once a week my tomato plants are outta control and the watermelons are taking over my garden! What i used is backed by science!
I have a big bag of Azomite that would have done that for me. But, just to be clear, the purpose of my experiment was to test the lower limits of the plants. I didn't want to give them a bunch of stuff to make them succeed. I found a hole in the system, and learning exactly where the system breaks is so important.
@TheMillennialGardener Absolutely and I appreciate you doing that for everyone very educational and a learning experience for sure cause I've learned so much over the last month just binge watching your videos! 👍
I actually consider this a winner. In reading many of the informed comments, they discuss why this experiment appeared to fail. We learn from failures, hopefully. The failures started the conversation on what the problem was. We have all learned.
THANK you -- SUPERIOR information…DALE is enjoying the pumpkin for sure…
You're welcome! Dale is a big pumpkin 😂
With all that peat you needed to add calcium to get the ph to the proper levels! I use calcium every year in my soil to keep the acid down. Hope that helps.
Didn't peat moss and perlite make up the medium ? Or was it coco coir ? If peat my guess is ph if coco maybe salt build up .... But it most likely a combination of multiple issues and many theories fit or make sense.
Try again with your normal potting mix then do your experiment with the different fertilizers. I would be interested to know which one did better based on that.
Peat moss is organically inert... but not chemically inert... you need black peat to be as close to chemically inert as possible...
Highly decomposed peat will tend to remain more chemically stable as the organic decomposition process has already been carried out. For this reason you want to buy what is commonly known as “black peat” (H7-H10) where microbial activity has already dialed down and the peat moss more closely approaches what we would call an “inert media”. This however does not mean that Peat moss is chemically inert at this point as it does contain as a significant amount of substances that can affect your nutrient solution.
One main characteristic of peat is that it’s acidic. This means that the pH of untreated peat will usually be between 3 and 4.5, too low for use in hydroponic applications. Peat is generally amended with calcium carbonate (lime) to make its pH go up and remain there but this process can be ineffective if the peat can still decompose very significantly (if you buy peat with decomposition < H7). This also contributes high amounts of Ca into the media which might lead to nutritional problems if Ca is also applied normally in solution. To alleviate these issues peat is also sometimes treated with lime/dolomite mixtures so that the counter-ions are both Mg and Ca. Alternatively - but more expensively - this problem can be solved by using phosphate buffer solutions that are run through the peat for a significant period of time. A potassium monobasic/dibasic phosphate buffer at a pH of 6.5 with a 100 mM concentration can buffer the peat moss. For this the buffer needs to be applied until the run-off pH out of the peat comes out unchanged. Then tap water should be applied to remove the K/P from the media. Note that this will only work for black peat that’s already gone through most of the decomposition process as lighter peats will simply decompose further and acidify the media again.
That’s a great point! Would coco coir have been a better choice for the experiment?
@@lisahand5752yes coco has no nutritional value but he would probably forget to buffer it and another flawed experiment
I think the pH of peat moss could be a factor. If a plant isn't in ideal pH per that organism, it won't uptake nutrients. I use compost and manure with liquid fertilizer boosts, however I grew hydroponic plants or inert mediums and liquid fertilizers for many years.
So, I believe a crucial missing element to your experiment is pH. Test your rain reservoir, then check your mixtures, and then check the pH of your soil medium with your water, and again with your fertilizer-water mix.
Lots of people grow tomatoes in hydroponic systems, pH is crucial. If the peat is too acidic, and your rainwater is around only 5.5 , tomatoes will struggle. You need that pH boosted up to 6-7
In my experiance, green beans (bush or pole) HATE any miracle grow. Not that beans need much fertilizer but I use a green stalk and tried liquid fert and it killed all the beans, but the leafy greans did fine 🤷♀️
Because beans hate nitrogen. They literally dispose of it in the soil.
I have used bone meal on my bush beans and they have huge dark green leaves. They are beautiful
I am not an expert for sure, but I have been using the Bloom Booster for years. The directions clearly state to add 1/4 teaspoon per gallon, not 1 tablespoon. There are 3 teaspoons in 1 tablespoon. 4 quarter teaspoons in one teaspoon. So, you were giving the plants 12 times the correct dose. Just to be sure I don't over do it, I actually dilute the gallon mixture I prepare by dividing it into 2 gallons.
You basically tried to grow plants hydroponically without the specialized hydroponic fertilizer!
You are correct in your conclusions, organic fertilizers provide more trace minerals, and also healthy microbiological components. Plants need healthy soil with probiotics and mycorrhizae to process all of the minerals and organic matter.
Fish fertilizer caused my tomato plants to grow 8 to 10 feet high. They're so tall I can't reach them. Worse yet, the green tomatos are the size of watermellons
Geez. They sound awesome! You can run those indeterminate tomatoes sideways once they reach 5 or 6 feet. Would love to have those green tomatoes to cook. Ummmmm.
This awesome what kind of fertilizers
Alaska 5-1-1 to start and Neptune's 2-3-1 as they bloom. Boom, done.
When I start seedlings, I water the tray with a dilute 5-1-1 fish emulsion and then just water. I'll fertilize them once when they go in the ground and then one more time with neptunes when they're done with veg.
Watermelon? Come on now! 😂
@@deborahdunn7844 Yes!!! Coated with corn meal and fried. Yummy!! Red ones would be great for sandwiches and cooking with recipes. Less chopping.
I think it would be interesting to see the experiment rerun using a much more intensive feeding schedule. I know of people who use the basic Miracle Grow formula in a hydroponic setup which would only utilize the nutrients provided from the Miracle Grow. Thank you for posting the fail! It was very informative and interesting!
I don't know that any fertilizer comes complete. When you showed us a picture of one of the boxes it did show some micronutrients that were added to the box.
They do a really good job at adding micro-nutrients, but I don't think any processed fertilizer is ever going to be nutritionally complete. I look at them more like a supplement than real food, especially after this video. Sort of like those "In addition to a healthy diet and exercise" commercials. I don't think it can be all you feed them in an otherwise dead medium.
Samsteel is on the right track. Coco coir/perlite would have done better as it would not lower the PH like Peat moss. That being said, the main issue was PH and not a lack of micronutrients. Even the solution was too acidic and needed to likely be PH'd up to 6.0+/- and you would have had success. Soil would have buffered the PH and would not have required adjustment like the inert material does. The experiment would still have worked in Peat moss had you raised the PH of the fertilizer to compensate for the acidity of the moss. Basically, you locked out the ability for the plant to absorb all the different NPK.
I would use some portion of soil and compost, that's a real garden situation most people have. Not, peat and perlite.
The goal was to run a controlled experiment, though. Adding too much supplementation will muddy the results. Next time, I will have to add something to the compost to make up for the nutrients the MiracleGro products lack, but I can't add much more. Maybe a small amount of cow manure compost.
I think this was a brilliant experiment! There are so many folks that try to grow in soil much like what you used. I do learn so much from gardeners that are learning right beside me…yep ☺️ I love the comments from those that have extra knowledge that I can add to my brain bank! I think you are the first Gardner I have seen do this type experiment! Thank you!
So much wrong with your ‘experiment’. You did not test the null hypothesis and requires one , and for your case, two types of controls, as well as replication. Your plants look to have suffered from salt burn (way too much fertilizer). Note the burned leaves and apical buds. You did not test nutrient balance as you claim. Additionally, your potting mix was likely acidic, which alone would probably be ok but it added insult to injury to your poor plants. You have good ideas but need some professional guidance on how to appropriately test you hypotheses. A good Master Gardener’s course or conversations with your county extension team (free advice from professionals with years of trained experience) will help get you to where you are trying to go with this type of testing. Be careful with your claims and recommendations. In this case it’s horticultural malpractice.
Great video. Gardening is not all success, there are failures occasionally. Keep it up. And now I can use my MG AP in peace😊
where did you get the green container thing at? thats pretty cool. thanks
It looks like a foldable dog pool but I don’t know what size or where to buy. I love the color. Please tell us where?
It's an old kiddie pool. The bottom is blown out, because those cheap things break down in a season or two in the sun. But, it works great to mix potting soil. It's in really bad shape, though. I'm going to trash it. It's pretty much done 😆
and hills of NC here this year was a complete bust. Only the onions did well. Heat and bugs got the biggest majority. Looking forward to the fall garden.
Thank you for doing this and sharing it!
You're welcome!
I made homemade fish fertilizer this year using flounder I’ve caught. It’s made a big difference to the health of my plants.
The peat moss threw the pH out of whack. Plants weren't able to take up the nutrients. Check the pH of the mix in those pots, that will tell the tale.
@@AMBlues That’s exactly what I was thinking too, except he responded to my comment saying that he uses peat moss all the time and that the pH isn’t nearly as low as I thought it was. Oh well. 🤷🏻♂️
@@theteenagegardener Yes but he said it was peat moss then he said it was coco coir.
Yes Thats what I was thinking too. He never checked the ph of the soil and the water which, even though it was the same in all pots, should have been documented if it was a scientific experiment as it was a factor.
*Great experiment! it was very informative to see just how essential organic matter in the soil is for plants to survive. I'm so happy I used compost in my blueberry potting mixture otherwise I would have been toast... It would be cool if you made a video about what gardeners should use for their blueberry potting mix because when I researched it online everyone had a differnet answer and it was so confusing...* I got inspired to add blueberries to my garden from your videos on blueberries, and I bought the 25 gallon grow bags from your Amazon Store Front too. The potting mixture I used for my highbush blueberries was this: 45% GolfGreen Canadian sphagnum peat moss, 30% compost, 10% miracle grow potting mix 0.21-0.11-0.16, 10% miracle grow perlite 0.07-0.07-0.07, 5% high porosity HP mycorrhizae, and I also added some 4-10-0 GolfGreen bone meal, some jobe's organic 4-4-4, and some eleimental sulfer pellets. It was kind of a guess based on some articles I found online, hopefully it works out well, I'm also using miracle evergreen & acid loving water soluable food to give them a boost until the sulfer pellets kick in. What mixture would you have used? Would love to see a video on this!
-From your Nova Scotia Canadian Subscriber :)
1st… 😊
Thanks for watching!
This is totally NOT a failed experiment! I agree with your conclusion, AND I think next time you should do a video on reviving the plants so they'll thrive and produce. Hi and hugs to Dale🥰 and thank you for the vid🩷
Notice how the tops leaves have died before the middle/bottom, where the water needs to travel the most distance. If it cant uptake water, it cant uptake nutrients properly.
I have used water soluble nutrients with peat/ perlite and coco and perlite at least a dozen times and had completely healthy plants from seed to harvest.
About 15 minutes into your video you nailed the micro ingredients. We bow fish carp. Big carp, 30 inches average size in the winter. They get buried in my grow areas. That is all I use for fertilizer. At the end of the growing season the fish are gone and the bones stay for at least another year for natural bone meal in the soil.
I see you’re getting a lot of criticism for your experiment. I have to say that, as a simple newbie gardener, for me this has been super useful. Thanks for the effort!
New to your channel, thank so much for the videos, they've been great. My dad was diagnosed with cancer and had planted some tomatoes and cucumbers and they would've died if I didn't help take care of and I was very nervous to touch because I usually kill most plants. What helped the most was how to pollinate them, watering them correctly, sun/shade, how to prune and feeding them. This video on your experiment helped a lot because that is seriously what happened to me last time I tried and I gave up. I learned so much that I'm going to try some on my own next season!
I'm growing some MaryJane in nothing but coco coir just using the miracle grow and I started feeding at 10 days. I feed them every day 3 times a day with 1 teaspoon of fertilizer in 1L of water. The plants are 21 days old and they are doing really good I will be doing the same experiment with tomatoes and peppers starting next week.
This is great. It's not a failure. It's a way to grow that doesn't work. Your explanation of nutrients at the beginning is just what I'm working on right now, to begin an in depth study of how food plants work, grow & thrive.
My soil mix in SoCal that I figured out is - 1 part Recipe 420, 1 part bagged organic compost, and a guesstimate by "experience?" of bagged topsoil "for a stiffer soil that doesn't dry out too fast, some sphagnum peat moss, pumice to keep soil from compacting too much.
Then for granulated long term fertilizers I use G/B 4-4-4 organic, bone meal, gardener lime, and for leeks a good supply of blood meal on top of soil and more bone meal in the root area of the leeks.
I use the Miracle Grow fertilizers you show in addition to fish emulsion, liquid kelp, Fox Farms Cal-Mag, Liqinox Grow & Fish Fertilizer. Liquid bone meal. Throw in some worm castings. Grow everything in containers.
All my raw beginner failures with blossom end rot last year went away. Grow a bunch of zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, leeks, some determinant tomatoes and they are all working well.
Now, I'm going to add in season lettuce following one of your videos. My lettuce venture last year didn't turn out well...... :)
This year is such a difference from last year when I started it blows me away.
Your teaching style is great. Even me as a relative beginner is getting great results.....
I'm going to have to start writing this stuff in a notebook......Hey, what a concept....:) Thanks - have a great grow year...