Hi aptosca - It said - for potted plants. How are you to know that doesn't mean house plants? That was one of your questions. The terms potted plants and house plants are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference. All houseplants are potted, but not all potted plants are grown in the house; many people have potted plants outside, on patios and porches, or summering their houseplants outside, or just growing-on plants for size or whatever - many reasons. Plants grown outside in pots tend to dry out faster than plants grown indoors, and that's why some people prefer "water retentive" soils for outdoor potted plants. But one thing is true outdoors or indoors - wet soil that never dries out makes for wet roots, and wet roots make for dead plants. As you can see from reading all of this thread, there's a lot of 'different strokes for different folks.' It's one reason that you find so much conflicting information if you do much research. One thing that's absolutely true, though, is that if roots stay too wet, plants die. But... That's not always true, either, because many plants are incredibly, amazingly adaptable. Species that are known to hate "wet feet" sometimes adapt to living in a constantly wet - I mean soaking wet - pot. I know, I have one. This is another source of much conflicting information. My advice to you would be to try what seems reasonable to you, what seems to fit your own requirements best. If things don't work as well as you would like, try something else. Even if you are satisfied with results, go ahead and try something different, just as an experiment. That's one reason you never get tired of working with plants, once you get into it.

"The reason Miracle Gro is thought to be bad for the soil is that it is not food for soil microbes." This isnÂt true. Microbes might not use the elements specifically for fuel, but they use them to carry out biological functions just like every other plant or animal. "The salty chemicals in Miracle Gro are not in any of the food groups (protein, vitamins, minerals, or carbohydrates)." This isnÂt true either. The minerals in fertilizers are minerals and are used by plants to make proteins, vitamins, and carbohydrates. As I said above, microbes use them as well. The deleterious effects of chemical fertilizers are way way overblown. Yes, if you inject anhydrous ammonia into the plow layer of your soil you are going to wipe out the microbe population and essentially sterilize the soil for a couple of weeks. If on the other hand you spray your yard with miracle grow in solution you are only going to stimulate microbes that will use the available nitrogen to burn carbon (organic matter) for fuel. " "Salts" defined in simplest terms, simply means that it dissolves in water." That is not a good definition. Many salts are considered insoluble such as phosphate rocks. A better definition is that a salt is a cation (positive charge because it is missing an electron) and an anion (negative charge because it has an extra electron) joined together (the positive and negative charges being drawn together). Table salt for example is a sodium cation bound with a chloride anion. Potassium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, etc are soluble salts that are used for fertilizers because they are composed of elements that plants use as nutrients.

If you haven't had any problems so far, then you are doing fine and can continue. Just watch the amount you are applying and frequency and gauge that against how much of the diluted mix you would apply. You could apply it too heavily, but otherwise you would be just fine. The granular fertilizers dissolve the same as the miracle grow crystals, except for the clay carrier, but they don't dissolve as quickly as the crystals do.

The Schultz product supplies far more P than plants want or can use, which is reason enough not to use it, but it also lacks many important nutrients (Ca, Mg, and several micronutrients), and it gets it's N from urea, which tends to promote coarse growth and long internodes. It really is a poor choice as your 'go to' fertilizer for houseplants. The Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is a FAR better choice. Even Miracle-Gro 12-4-8 which lacks the same nutrients missing from the Schultz 10-15-10 is a superior choice because the ratio (3:1:2) much more closely mimics the ratio at which your plants actually utilize nutrients. Also, Superthrive = snake oil. The question regarding the value of Superthrive as a miracle tonic for plants is often bandied about in horticultural circles. Over the years, I had read claims that ranged from, “I put it on my plant, which had never bloomed, and it was in full bloom the next day.” to, “It was dead - I put Superthrive on it and the next day it was alive and beautiful, growing better than it ever had before.” I decided to find out for myself. If you look for information on the net, you will probably only find the manufacturer’s claims and anecdotal observations, both so in want of anything that resembles a control. Though my experiments were far from purely scientific, I tried to keep some loose controls in place so that I could make a fair judgment of its value, based my own observations. Here is what I did, what I found, and the conclusions I made about any value the product Superthrive might hold for me. On four separate occasions, I took multiple cuttings of plants in four different genera. In each case the group of cuttings were taken from the same individual plant to reduce genetic variance. The plant materials I used were: Ficus benjamina, (a tropical weeping fig) Luna apiculata (Peruvian myrtle), Chaenorrhinum minus(a dwarf snapdragon), and an unknown variety of Coleus. In each instance, I prepared cuttings from the same plant and inserted them in a very fast, sterile soil. The containers containing half of the cuttings were immersed/soaked in a Superthrive solution of approximately 1/2 tsp per gallon of water to the upper soil line. The other half of the cuttings were watered in with water only. In subsequent waterings, I would water the “Superthrive batch” of cuttings with a solution of 10 drops per gallon and the others with only water. The same fertilizer regimen was followed on both groups of cuttings. In all four instances, the cuttings that I used Superthrive on rooted and showed new growth first. For this reason, it follows that they would naturally exhibit better development, though I could see no difference in overall vitality, once rooted. I can also say that a slightly higher percentage of cuttings rooted that were treated with the Superthrive treatment at the outset. I suspect that is directly related to the effects of the auxin in Superthrive hastening initiation of root primordia before potential vascular connections were destroyed by rot causing organisms. In particular, something I looked for because of my affinity for a compact form in plants was branch (stem) extension. (The writer is a bonsai practitioner.) Though the cuttings treated with Superthrive rooted sooner, they exhibited the same amount of branch extension. In other words, internode length was approximately equal and no difference in leaf size was noted. As a second part to each of my “experiments”, I divided the group of cuttings that had not been treated with Superthrive into two groups. One of the groups remained on the water/fertilizer only program, while the other group was treated to an additional 10 drops of Superthrive in each gallon of fertilizer solution. Again, the fertilizer regimen was the same for both groups. By summer’s end, I could detect no difference in bio-mass or vitality between the two groups of plants. Since I replicated the above experiment in four different trials, using four different plant materials, I am quite comfortable in drawing some conclusions as they apply to me and my growing habits or abilities. First, and based on my observations, I have concluded that Superthrive does hold value for me as a rooting aid, or stimulant if you prefer. I regularly soak the soil, usually overnight, of my newly root-pruned and often bare-rooted repots in a solution of 1/2 tsp Superthrive per gallon of water. Second, and also based on my observations, I no longer bother with its use at any time other than at repotting. No evidence was accumulated through the 4 trials to convince me that Superthrive was of any value as a “tonic” for plants with roots that were beyond the initiation or recovery stage. Interestingly, the first ingredient listed as being beneficial to plants on the Superthrive label is vitamin B-1 (or thiamine). Growing plants are able to synthesize their own vitamin B-1 as do many of the fungi and bacteria having relationships with plant roots, so it's extremely doubtful that vitamin B-1 could be deficient in soils or that a growing plant could exhibit a vitamin B-1 deficiency. Some will note that I used more of the product than suggested on the container. I wanted to see if any unwanted effects surfaced as well as trying to be sure there was ample opportunity for clear delineation between the groups. I suspect that if a more dilute solution was used, the difference between groups would have been even less clear. It might be worth noting that since the product contains the growth regulator (hormone) auxin, its overuse can cause defoliation, at least in dicots. The broad-leaf weed killer Weed-B-Gone and the infamous “Agent Orange“, a defoliant that saw widespread use in Viet Nam, are little more than synthetic auxin. See what Linda Chalker-Scott PhD says about it. Al