Scotts announced it was selling its professional fertilizer group for $270 million to Israel Chemical (ICL), a company that specializes in extracting minerals from the Dead Sea to make fertilizer. The Scotts Professional Group will now be called Everris. Scotts Professional was the manufacture of Osmocote and Peters fertilizers (Jack's Professional Water Soluble Fertilizers). Everris stated that Osmocote, Scotts Professional fertilizers, and all Jack's Water Soluble fertilizers formulations will remain unchanged. - Millet (499- Down 100 more days-)

i guess they won't keep the logo along with the formula. thus, it's good to know, in order to stop looking the shelves for a good old label as it probably won't be available for a long time. it might be the right time to get a good supply of fertilizers...

What is the general shelf life of osmocote or peters? if stored in a cool dry place?

I think this deal was done at least a few months ago. I had been looking for MicroMax and finally called Scott's in an effort to find a disctributor. The Scott's operator told me that had sold the division to ICL and gave me a phone number to call for them. I plan on doing a little trial with MicroMax and sulfur in 8 holes per tree as done by Dr. Carl Whitcomb to see if I can get a good response with some problem trees in my chestnut orchard.

Micromix, and Dr. Whitcomb are two peas in a pod. Dr. Whitcomb formally of the University of Oklahoma, and now head of Root Maker Air Root Pruning Container Company, writes allot about his work with Micromix in his outstanding book " Plant Production In Containers II". Plant Production In Containers II is an excellent book, well worth buying, but it also contains many self serving sections. Micromix is a good product, but I would think that STEM (Soluble Trace Element Mix) would also be just as good. Normally with mature trees, trace element mixes are applied as a foliar spray. Harvey, please supply a followup post after your in-ground application micromix experiment is completed. - Millet (486-)

Dr. Whitcomb naturally promotes his own products. From what I understand, he developed MicroMax and sold the rights to it to Scott's. I've chosen it to try to replicate his results from a study published at http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/resources/total_tree_nutrition.pdf This seemed to result in at least a moderately long term solution to a chlorosis problem with oaks and easier to spot treat problem trees instead of apply foliar sprays to my entire orchard which I have tried with limited success in the past.

I had been thinking earlier this year about reading comments such as chestnuts, citrus, etc. "like" acidic soils. I got to thinking about how such comments developed and decided the most likely cause is that different plants have higher requirements of specific nutrients and most nutrients are more available at a particular pH range. I've tried to lower the pH of my chestnut orchard for over 10 years, applying considerable sulfur (mostly in the form of Nphuric as a source of my nitrogen fertilizer) with very limited success. Dr. Whitcomb's published study sounds to have good potential as it's attempting to just lower the pH at 8 sites bored around each tree where the MicroMax is also applied. The income generated from my best producing chestnut trees to the problem trees can justify about 50 times the expense it will cost me to treat one tree (just from one year's of income). I'm not confident it will work, but it's worth a try.

My most problematic tree was just treated with the PhotoGreen I mentioned in another thread so that won't be entirely accurate to measure results but I have many more to test out (I will still treat that tree if PhotoGreen doesn't show improvement in a few weeks.

Harvey, don't get me wrong. I am a believer in Dr. Whitcomb's methods. I would go far enough to say, if Dr. Whitcomb research says a product or a method works, I would tend to believe it. However, anything applied to the soil could easily have different results, in different sections of the country. All in all, I have adapted many of Dr. Whitcomb's ideas, with success. Wish you all the success. - Millet (486-)

Sorry if I gave the impression of not understanding your intentions.

To be clear, I chose MicroMax because it had worked in his study and I figured I should use the same product to see if it worked here (if I used a different product I would still be uncertain if MicroMax would help or not).

Cheers,

Harvey