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Miracle Grow All Purpose?
- Thread starter Trever1t
- Start date
Not the best. You can use it for a while, while the plants are still young and simply growing. However, it's better to find a plant food that is specifically made for tomatoes (as they're related to peppers and have similar feed needs.) Once your plants get into production stage, in particular, they need plenty of calcium and magnesium to help prevent blossom end rot (BER). Many of us use Botanicare's CalMag as one option.
Keep using what you have till its gone then get this.
All purpose plant food is OK for overall plant health, but it's designed to just keep plants healthy - not necessarily for fruit production. When my plants start flowering, I like to cut their nitrogen intake to encourage them to put more energy into producing pods rather than continuing to produce more foliage. If you limit yourself to one "jack of all trades" fertilizer, you may be hindering your plants' potential to produce pods.
I use blood meal and bone meal until flowering, then switch to fish emulsion and bone meal for fruit production. You might want to reduce the amount of miracle gro you add during flowering, and replace the difference with a low N, high P fertilizer.
I use blood meal and bone meal until flowering, then switch to fish emulsion and bone meal for fruit production. You might want to reduce the amount of miracle gro you add during flowering, and replace the difference with a low N, high P fertilizer.
Here is a link to a recent thread discussing the positive and negative aspects of miracle grow.
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/39959-thoughts-on-miracle-grow/
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/39959-thoughts-on-miracle-grow/
Its like giving your plants a snickers candy bar. Good for alittle bump but not great in the long run. NPK # look great on those products but are heavy insalts that will end up blocking alot of good nutrients in your soil. Build your soil and you won't have to add to many nut's to the soil. 
If it was what I had on hand for potted plants, I would use it but as was said above, I would supplement it with Cal-mag . If this is an outdoor plant, I wouldn't spend any time worrying about salt build up. The rain water will be more than enough to flush the salts out. There are quite a few people out there that use MG and Cal-mag in their hydroponic grows where the plants get no other nutes and from everything I have read, they do fine.
I presume this is the 20-20-20 mix but you didn't say. If it is, that is a decent balance and peppers like balance since they are growing, blooming, fruiting and ripening all at the same time.
I presume this is the 20-20-20 mix but you didn't say. If it is, that is a decent balance and peppers like balance since they are growing, blooming, fruiting and ripening all at the same time.
It depends on how that fits into your total nutritional plan. I find it most useful for plants that have outgrown their pots and due to laziness or an already large pot I want to keep small enough to be easily mobile, I just want a way to provide a bit more NPK to finish up a season. Sometimes repotting a large plant with a lot of pods on it just isn't desirable too far into the season. Certainly it is not a complete source of nutrients but my soil is continually composting from amendments so it ends up lacking NPK more than anything else once plants are large.