Scott's Humus & Manure Soil Conditioner

Visiting the garden center today I noticed a new pallet of bagged compost that they hadn't carried before.  The bags are labeled as Scotts Premium Humus & Manure Lawn & Garden Soil Conditioner.  I checked the label found that the bag contains "Humus" (from one or more of the following: forest products, peat, rice hulls and/or compost), manure and poultry litter.  No indication on the quantity of any of those products, but considering that the NPK of this product is only 0.12-0.06-0.09 it would appear that there is very little manure of any kind. An nitrogen level of only 0.12% is pretty low for any composted manure.

Wouldn't seem that this would be a good part of Mel's Mix.

The peat used to make the humus already makes it suspect. Plus the words "Soil Conditioner."

But it's PREMIUM  

Hip2B wrote:But it's PREMIUM  

sanderson wrote:

Hip2B wrote:But it's PREMIUM  

Worth a second laugh! 

Humus is one of the major reasons why we compost. It is one of the measurements to really get a measurement on soil fertility and percentage of organic matter. it is compost when compost has nothing more to decompose to. Better explained by this article.

https://humates.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ORGANICMATTERPettit.pdf

Here many of the Scott's Products are under Earthgro but some still have Scott's. I wish they would give a percentage of Humus in the bag because that would be a good thing to know. The low NPK doesn't bother me as that is a guarantee, any lower than what is printed and you get fined and can get fined per bag, on any fertilizer bag. So usually the NPK is lower than is what is actually in the bag and why organic fertilizers are low in their numbers. I know Scott's has a bad reputation but surely all their products can't be bad but probably better suited for garden soil than as part of Mel's Mix as OhioGardener and sanderson have stated.

It takes awhile to get humus, far longer than usable compost. If done by the hot composting method in a month or two but that is just compost that has negated plant pathogens and weed seeds, it still has to be worked on by the soil microbes. So if Scott's is actually giving you humus than that is if a good thing a very good thing as a soil amendment. I am still learning as we switch to feeding the soil microbiology and allow them to feed the plants. It would be nice to have guidelines similar to the NPK on which to compare soil amendments and well defined terminology.

I'm not trusting much of any bagged "composted" products - they're all uncomposted when I look. 

I was thinking I'd be able to get some hummus from the treed area back of my property, raked up some pine straw there but it was a very light coating and the "hummus" under wasn't thick or easily removable despite being there for 20 yrs. (Or more? ) 

Anyway, I did my best with my first Mel's Mix, at huge expense and trouble. 
The compost parts:  my own compost; another homeowner's compost; and his worm castings; Black Velvet mushroom compost from Lowe's;  1/5th manure (Black Cow from Lowe's with a bit of Epsoma chicken pelleted as part of it).

But the SFG despite being verdant with huge plants is not producing much vegetables.  Am I just too early, will it catch up?  Or have I got the mix wrong?  Will it improve as soil biology settles in? 

How am I to know?  Friends who just planted in the ground are getting way more produce, despite getting in later than my late transplants.

I made some more less than optimum MM this weekend, because I still have some 18gal tubs to do...  still had some compost sources.  But by the time I got to berries and two huge tubs I'm going to grow carrots in, deep, I was out of most of the home compost/worm casting sources.  So I made some up with only the Lowe's sources.  Blackberries will "grow in anything," I'm told; seven 18gal tubs, 14 plants.  For the carrots, in huge mineral tubs, I used the %'s on the Coast of Maine I had bought and made up a MM proportioned that way adding vermiculite and the Lowe's products, all I had. We'll see.