Miracle-Gro LiquaFeed All Purpose Plant Food Universal Starter Kit, For Flowers, Vegetables, Trees and Shrubs, One 16 oz. Plant Food and One Universal Feeder

Nice little system to inject fertilizer into the water while watering your plants. It has a little pump built into the system, powered by the flow of water from the tap, so that the greater the flow of water, the faster the pump pumps. That means that no matter the flow rate, you get a consistent percentage of fertilizer added to the water. I have used the Miracle-Gro hose end mixer with the blue crystals, but the spray concentration is not uniform from beginning to end, starting out more concentrated and then getting weak at the end. It is also heavy and unwieldy and not well suited to watering individual containers.Using this Universal Feeder with a good water wand is much easier and effective. The only problem in my view was buying the little bottles of fertilizer to use with the system. It does not make sense to be shipping water around the country, when I have plenty of water available at my house. Also, the bottles are pretty small and run out in about fifteen minutes, so I needed to keep an eye on the fertilizer level to be sure that I still had some fertilizer left in the bottle. I also did not like the idea of only using a bottle once and then throwing it away. That seems wasteful to me.I dealt with these issues by adapting one of the little bottles so that I could mix up my own fertilizer and then add it to the bottle. I also expanded the capacity of the system by adding a gallon bottle to the little bottle. This way, I can mix up a batch of fertilizer a gallon at a time and water for an hour or more without worrying about running out of fertilizer. Mixing the blue crystals one to one with water produces a concentration that is identical to that found in the LiquaFeed bottles, since the crystals have exactly twice the N-P-K as the liquid in the bottles.I did this by gluing the cap from an empty gallon bottle to the bottom of a LiquaFeed bottle. Then I drilled a hole through the cap and the bottom of the LiquaFeed bottle so that the two bottles were interconnected. The bottom of the LiquaFeed bottle is thick tough plastic, so I you try my method, start with a small drill and work up to a larger drill size to get an appropriate size hole. See my photo of the cap for the size of hole that I ended p with.I also cut a flap in the bottom of the gallon bottle. This helps in two ways. First, it allows air into the bottle so the fertilizer flows freely and the large bottle does not collapse as the liquid is removed. It also gives me an access point so that I can use a funnel to fill up the bottle without having to remove the bottle from the feeder each time. The two bottles glued together is a bit top heavy, so I have used a bungee cord to support the bigger bottle against a fence. See the photo that shows the bungee cord holding the gallon bottle section upright.So far, it has been working great and my plants have really thrived by receiving all the fertilizer. I have been using it a lot more often than every two weeks but there is no sign of burning or over fertilization, so the Universal Feeder System must dilute the concentration of the fertilizer down enough so that you can use the system quite often. I am using the fertilizer about every other watering and since all I have to do is turn the selector switch, it makes it more likely that I will fertilize than if I had to remove and attach a bottle of LiquaFeed every time I wanted to fertilize my plants.Update 4/27/17: I have found that you can simply pry the top off of the little Miracle-Gro bottles and insert the top into a regular 2 liter soda bottle. I did that for a while, but the 2 liter soda bottle is thin and fragile and tends to collapse as the liquid is sucked out of the bottle. I found a sturdier bottle with the same neck size as the Miracle-Gro bottle and the 2 liter bottle. The neck size must be fairly standard. The one I found was a bottle in an Asian food store that held an aloe vera drink. As our British cousins would say, "Works a treat!" Please check out new photos to see how it works.

This universal feeder is so convenient. I think of myself as a lazy person and I was turned off by the fact that I had to get a fertilizer concentrate and mix it with water and then fill it up in my watering can and fertilize the vegetable patch. This made it super easy for me. I have a large vegetable patch and this has made it a breeze. I have showed this off to my friends as though I discovered it and atleast 2 more of my friends have gone and bought the same. I have not verified that the mixing occurs at the correct ratio. I see good yield from the patch and so I assume it works.One hiccup: This refused to work with the expandable hose that I bought. I would turn this to 'feed' and then turn the spray nozzle on and no fertilizer work get mixed (There is a clicking sound to indicate it works... ). One workaround is that I start the water and then turn the device to 'feed' from 'water'. Seems to work me. I had no issues with the normal garden hose and so I assume there is some sensor which works?

Called tech support and they were no help. They told me it was likely clogged. With what? It is brand new! Anyway I followed their advice and looked for clogs. ... Nothing. I looked at other negative reviews and experienced the same things they state. I might be a sucker but I am going to try another one in hopes it actually works. BTW, I have used the hand held ones and they work - for ONE season. I suppose you can't store it in your shed or even you garage since it might get cold or hot enough to break it. Maybe sleep with it tucked under your pillow?Update - second unit was futsy but at least this one worked after rotating the bottle angle up and down several times. It's like it needs a manual primer. I figured I'd keep it because I could make it work when I needed it, but now just the other morning I came out to a soaked patio because apparently one of the seals gave out and water was just dripping out of the unit. I give up. What happened MG?