I used to have a neighbour who swore by Miracle Gro for the plants in his garden. Whereas I just used plain rain water on my plants year after year, he religiously watered his with Miracle Gro every few weeks via the Miracle Gro feeder that you attached to the hose, and by mid-summer, his garden was in full bloom and blossoming whereas my garden was still struggling to produce more than a few buds. A while he was pulling out crops for his table from his vegetable patch, mine was still struggling to produce anything. So the next spring I decided to give this stuff a try.

It is basically a multi purpose plant food that looks like a load of blue crystals in a bag, where you often see it in the shops in either a 500 gram or 1 kg (2 x 500 grams) format, although I know some garden centres also do it in larger formats. I bought the 1 kg format for about £3.50. To go with it, I also went out and bought the Miracle Gro feeder. I think it is the old format now where you filled the canister underneath with one sachet of Miracle Gro (it basically holds 500 grams of Miracle Gro) and screwed it back onto the holder. The holder then operates like a watering gun with a selector for either water alone or water plus feeder, and at the front you get a choice of 3 nozzles on a selector - spray, flat spray and jet. The good thing about this feeder is that it is designed to deliver the correct mixture of Miracle Gro and water to you plants. So no more mixing measured quantities into your watering can.

Within a few weeks of using Miracle Gro, the results were obvious. My plants were blooming a lot earlier in the season than before, and keeping on a par with the neighbours who were continuing to use the product. Blooms were bigger, overall growth was a lot more vigorous. We also had vegetables from the garden on the table a lot sooner in the season than before.

So if you want an impressive garden and some big juicy vegetables that you have grown, I would recommend that you need to get a quality plant food such as this. But equally I would recommend that you should apply it with the Miracle Gro feeder because it will mean a lot less fuss, and make the whole process a whole lot easier.