veg. garden

I am trying my first vegetable garden it is a raised garden bed I got top soil which turned out to be river mud. I was told to fertilize it which I did I used two bags of 10-10-10. I worked that into the soil then I planted my vegetables. I did apply miracle grow after I did my planting. With in 2 days my cucumber plants were dead and two of my tomato plants. My broccoli leaves are turning white. I'm not sure what I did wrong was hoping someone out there could help. It seems like I am losing plants everyday. Any ideas?

What is the size of the raised garden?

I feel your pain. I once killed a lovely veggie garden with miracle gro. I've never used it again. It sounds to me like you've killed your garden with kindness. Too much chemical fertilizer. If you start over, you might want to add a bit of regular garden soil (no fertilizers in the soil) and see what happens. There are reams of books and articles out there that give great info about soils. I've found over the years that it's better for my garden to use natural fertilizers such as compost, chicken manure, or purchased organic fertilizers instead of chemical ones. Much harder to overdo it and kill off your lovely veggies! Good luck and let us know how things go.

I think the triple-ten was the problem, not the Miracle-Gro. But that is simply a guess since I still don't know what the size of the garden is.

Ken

Ken, you may be right about the 10 10 10. I've never used it so I don't know for sure. And you are right about needing to know the size of the bed. I shudder to think about all that fertilizer going into a small bed! I was basing my idea on the statement that the plants began to die two days after applying Miracle Gro. That's pretty much what happened to me many years ago. My fault for using too much, but I'm not brave enough to try it again!

I am neither a fan nor an opponent of Miracle-Gro. It is simply another water-soluble fertilizer, similar to many others. I use it on a lot of plants and have done so for several decades. As far as I know, I have never seen a plant suffer from using it. Is it my "Go-to" fertilizer? - hardly. Gosh, I grow so many different sorts of plants, nothing works for all of them. I use four different fertilizers just for my orchids! The one thing I try to always do is flush my plants with plain water between every application of fertilizer. Salts will build up and you want to rid your potting soil/orchid media of those salts. Believe me, you can kill a whole bunch of plants by using fertilizer at too high a dilution factor. I have had people tell me that since the directions called for 1 tsp. per gallon rate, they used ten times that rate. Their theory was: "If 1 tsp. is good, 10 tsp. must be ten times better". That's how some people think, for goodness sakes!

But, as you have noted, since we have no clue what the garden size is, we have no way of knowing what is the proper rate of fertilizer. It appears that mskbtik has lost interest in her /his question to the forum. It has been 8 days since his/her initial post.

Ken

Ken, Yes, it would seem that interest by the poster has been lost on this thread. But, it was good to hear your side of the Miracle gro story and I might just give it another try this year (being VERY careful about dilutions!). Happy gardening!