Miracle Gro MPC - avoid!

This stuff would be better named "Miracle if anything Gro in this"



In a bit of desperation, I ordered four bags of this to keep me going as there was no sign of my car coming out of the bodyshop. One assumed (big mistake) that it being a big brand, that it would be good stuff. Absolutely awful!

The texture is rough as a badger's backside, woody/twiggy and fibrous, and very course:







Thankfully since this had been delivered, my car had been returned to me, so I shot out to the local garden centre and bought the cheapest bags of compost I could find - and it is a million times better:

 

Looks awful, worse than the wickes own brand peat free I bought a month ago and I thought that was bad.

What did you buy instead?

 

I think it is Goodwins maybe? I will check tomorrow as I have another two bags of it - quite nice stuff to be fair.

Before going onto the Miracle Gro, I had used a few bags of this stuff - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08YF4YZ11?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
And it was really quite good too.

 

Fairly sure it is called Goodwins (or similar) I will check in the morning and get back to you

 

It is Goodwins - this is the stuff I bought - Multi-Purpose Compost - 70 Ltr Bag

 

Oh no - I have 20 bags of this New Horizons one on the way! Peat Free All Purpose Compost - 50 Ltr Bag

 

Thankfully the bulk of what is coming is to be mixed into the soil - very few things will be in pots. For baskets, I am going to give the coir blocks a shot (bought a couple of those today)

 

I stumbled over them in the garden centre today (and have seen the odd video of them online) so I thought I would give a couple of them a whirl.

 

I had good results last year with that New Horizon peat free MPC. Like others on the compost thread the last couple of years have found it varies batch by batch, not just this New Horizon stuff. The manufacturers don't have a set recipe for peat free, I think they have to use whatever is available especially from the council garden waste collections. Sometimes it looked a completely different colour as well as the consistency and obvious bits of bark, twigs etc.

This is where peat based composts win because the recipe ingredients hardly vary. But that's cosmetics in my opinion.

Have to say the poor looking Wickes own brand has performed well so far this year, I've only used it to pot on onions and start potato chitting, it's too coarse for seed sowing and to be fair it excludes that on the packaging label. Shouldn't really be called multi purpose but there isn't a definition.