Miracle-Gro Expand 'n Gro Concentrated Planting Mix Review & Giveaway

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Scotts® for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

This post is dirty!  I’ll be right up front with you about that.  It’s spring, time to get outside and get your garden ready, and I don’t know about you, but that’s never a bed of roses.  I have never had the privilege of living somewhere that had great soil, so supplementing dirt is always a huge chore to do in the spring. 

I first started gardening in Nevada, where my soil was sandy alkaline.  The white salt lines were everywhere, and I couldn’t water enough.  I grew strawberries and a few tomato plants that first year, and didn’t have much luck.  The ants got my strawberries, and my tomatoes were worth their weight in gold from all the watering I did.  Water’s expensive in the desert!

Now I’m in Idaho...and unfortunately, my lot was stripped of all the good farm soil that was here before me.  Darn!  Now I have horrendous clay and rock, which makes me almost wish for the desert sand back.  Ugh!

Because of these reasons, to succeed with my garden, I have to use soil amendments.  I found this new Planting Mix that looks intriguing!  It’s Miracle-Gro Expand ‘n Gro Concentrated Planting Mix.

It’s too early (i.e., COLD and TEMPERAMENTAL) for me to grow any garden plants yet here in Idaho, but I’m thinking of using this planting mix in one of my garden boxes this year as an experiment to see if it works.  Here’s what the package says it will do:

• Supposedly, this mix expands up to 3X when water is added to it.  Wow!   I’m wondering if my garden box will blow up like those plastic dinosaurs you soak in the sink for a day, and soon it’s a giant dinosaur blob.  That would be fun to see.
• It will feed plants for up to 6 months and improve your soil for multiple years.  I’m all about less work.  If this actually works this long, it will be worth its price.
• With this miracle planting mix, you will get up to 3X the flower and vegetable yield you get from your native soil.  This doesn’t work out so well mathematically for me, since my stripped native soil is as fertile as the Moon and yields a big 0000000.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Miracle-Gro doesn’t mean I’ll get no yield by using (0 x 3 = 0).  I think it’s safe to say I could use addition instead of multiplication (0 + 3 = 3), and that I will get at least 3 flowers and vegetables if I use Miracle-Gro’s new dirty drug of choice.  I can live with that.
• And last, but not least, the natural fibers in Miracle-Gro Expand ‘n Gro Concentrated Planting Mix hold up to 50% more water than basic potting soil.  Water’s good, when it comes to plants (unless you live in the northwest, then you probably would like to give some away).  Here’s a picture of my pots right now.  They look like they could use that 50% more water, don’t they?  The real test will be to see if this Miracle worker new planting mix can help me grow ANYTHING in these patio pots that receive the brutal heat of the day...and their inconsistent owner’s watering (OOPS!).

Since I can’t plant until Mother’s Day, I’m going to spend the warm days in between now and then, prepping my three garden boxes for planting.  I’m going to use this Miracle-Gro Expandomatic Mix that grows like a plastic dinosaur in one of these boxes (and I am hoping for miraculous results...since it’s called Miracle-Gro, for goodness sake).  The other box I might just leave alone (call it the laziness factor—or “What grows on the Moon” experiment), and the third one I’ll probably just throw in manure and cheap things like that to see what happens (whatever toots my horn when I’m perusing Home Depot).   

 

I’ll post in the summer about how these three boxes are faring.  We can call it the “Amazing Garden Box Race.”  It will be thrilling, I promise.  Lots of drama between the tomatoes and zucchini, to see which one can take over the most space the fastest (I’m betting on Zucchini...although I would have lost with that guess last year).

If you would like to check out this amazing ‘dirt drug’ from Miracle Gro that has a long name, to see if it works for you as you prep your garden for Spring and Summer...leave a comment below and a free sample size will be sent to one lucky winner! Hooray!

For a $3 off coupon click Expand ‘n Gro™