When plants are young, I use the liquid 8-8-8 (lighter mix) and manure tea or compost tea or a light kelp or fish fertilizer solution. Basically, whatever packaging broke that day at the store, LOL!
As they get older, I move up to a 10-10-10 or a 20-20-20. I like Miracle Grow just fine, and I also like the entire line of Espoma plant foods, formulated for specific things:
http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/fact_sheets.html
I LOVE Espoma HollyTone for my evergreens. It ROCKS. My FIL gives me ‘Charlie Brown’ trees at the end of his selling season; I’ve used HollyTone on them, and they are beautiful trees now. Except one. Harold. He’ll always be a weird-o, but we love him, anyway. :)
(Of course, you can’t BEAT liquid Algoflash for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.) :)
I’ve never had any problems burning my plants. I don’t think you gain anything by over-fertilizing, though. If anything, you’ll get pretty looking plants, but less blooms and fruiting/veggie production action.
Use a 10-30-20 on your hanging baskets and ‘showy’ pots of flowers. You WANT that higher bloom boosting middle number for those. BUT in July, switch back to 20-20-20 (Miracle Grow) because otherwise your foliage can look just horrible!
I’m so excited! I got my big jung’s order in this week. Including my algoflash. Do I just mix it up and spray it on the plants themselves? Seriously? I want to make sure I don’t do it wrong LOL.
I set out 100 pepper plants this morning. 150 more to go! *cringe*.
My blackberry bramble is coming along nicely. Added 5 more plants to it.
And my asparagus seeds are sprouting! I’ve got about 60 seedlings so far, yay! Hopefully they won’t die.