I typically don’t feed plants until a soil test or a plant shows deficiency. I have always held pre-fertilized soils in disdain and those that have time release capsules are the worst.
To avoid those problems I usually mix my own soils. However this morning I was looking into why I had what looks like the beginning of fertilizer toxicity, which should be a non issue for me. Yet there are some clear signs it is happening. So I took a severely underperforming seedling that had some curled under leaves and dumped it out to look at the roots, nice white roots. I had considered that it was possible that it was a matter of very old seeds that we’re just producing " birth defects" like an old woman with dried up eggs.well the fact is that somehow the bag of premixed potting soil I bought at the local hydro shop is contaminated with time release pellets or pills if you prefer
There in the tray are some of the little bastards, this mix was represented as having no added nutes, but there they are. Those came out of one #1 gardener pot, I sifted by hand to find them. Unintentional contamination I am sure. I think it is possible at the product bagging level. Not every manufacturer had their own equipment and contracts the work out to those who do have the machines. So I suppose that it happened during product change over. That is to say that perhaps the machines were making and bagging one brand and during the switch some enriched product remained in the works and brand X got put into brand Y and subsequently got shipped out this kind of thing happens all the time in industry food processors in particular that do many different brand labels generics store brands and name brand product alike. So I guess my take is precautionary. Before using pre-packaged soils shake a sample out and look it over. Time release nutes can really screw things up.
As for these guys at the hydro shop I hold them harmless,next time I go back to my own full homemade soil mix no more pre-packaged.
