Uh oh, just found out that miracle grow has been put in a fertilizer station that also waters my garden. Since I am new to organic gardening myself, can you help me to educate this fine man (and myself) on why this should not be used. I have told him that it makes things grow like crazy, at first, however then things seem to do very poorly. It reminds me of a sugar high where you have the high, briefly, but then crash and want to sleep.

Explain the economics. Tell him that once you get your plants addicted to chemical drugs, you must keep buying then forever (along with the resultant need for more pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides related to stressed, undernourished plants). Or you can go the organic route for free.

Actually draw up a balance sheet of how much he'll have to buy, and how often, to keep up the chemical addiction. Do the same thing for an organic option.

The crucial thing to remember is Feed the Soil, not the plants. Chemicals do nothing good for the soil, and can do harm. In a shovelful of healthy soil there is more microbial life than in all the populations of Bei Jing, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New Delhi put together. There's also critters you can see, like millipedes and worms that are crucial to the health of everything. They need the real thing, layers and layers of dead leaves, grass clippings, compost, otherwise they can't survive.

The chemicals build up and create high nitrate levels that leaches into the water table and pollutes the water, and get into your diet. That's the stuff in prepared meats like bacon that's bad for you :|

"Chemicals do nothing good for the soil, and can do harm."
Not really quite true since the nutrients that are in your soil and feed your plants are chemicals. However, any chemical in too large a quantity will do harm, table salt will kill you if you ingest enough of it at one time. Synthetic nutrients are responsible for more pollution than are natural nutrients because the synthetic fertilizers are water soluble and go into the soil and then out and into the ground water (which is why the manufacturers of those products are trying to find ways to make them less water soluble and call that timed release), leaving a wee bit behind to feed your plant.

Thanks a bunch! That should help.