You’re shopping in the nursery for some fertilizer, and you spy an “all in one” product that claims to take care of feeding and protecting your flowers and shrubs for 6 weeks. These multi-purpose products, often marketed as “All in One” or “3 in 1” contain a mixture of fertilizer, insecticide, and fungicide. While it might sound tempting to use these to have great looking plants all season long, it comes at an environmental price.
These products use a systemic insecticide, one that is absorbed through plant roots and circulated throughout the plant. That prize rose bloom you sniff is loaded with this chemical, “just in case” an insect decides to dine on it.
Adding unnecessary insecticides and fungicides to the soil is harmful to the microorganisms in the soil. Using an insecticide where none may put other creatures at risk. The product label indicates that the “product is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, and highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on blooming plants or weeds”; do you want that around your garden all the time?