I’ll admit it. I’m horrible at fertilizing plants.

Not sure how or why or when this began. I begin each gardening season saying I’ll be different, I’ll act responsibly. I’ll even see to the nutritional needs of my offspring. And then I just don’t follow through. It’s a miracle, really, that anything comes off the vine looking good. I think to myself, imagine how awesome the garden would be if I actually followed through and fertilized all season.

The Future is Now!

I like that idea. And I like the idea of a new product my friend Mark Highland has just released. Mark is the founder and chief idea guy at Organic Mechanics, an organic soils company based in Pennsylvania. They are testing out the fertilizer market with their first product that has a wicked-cool name: FUHGEDDABOUDIT! Root Zone Feeder Packs.

Essentially, it’s a giant tea bag. As you dig a hole in the garden or fill a container with soil, you add one of these fertilizer Root Zone Feeder Packs to the hole and place the plant’s root ball directly on top. Fill in the hole with soil, water the plant in and—you guessed it—forget about it (or, fuhgeddaboudit) for up to a month.

The tea bag is filled with a 4-2-2 natural fertilizer along with some good-for-plants additions such as mycorrhizae, biochar, azomite (complex silica ore with lots of trace minerals), and micronized oyster shells. These ingredients are in each tea bag in a ratio that boosts and maximizes plant growth and health.

What I like about the tea bag (or, since I haven’t used it yet, what I like about the tea bag in theory) is that there’s no measuring or mixing. Just throw one Root Zone Feeder Packs per plant into a container or in-ground hole and forget about fertilizer for four weeks. All that’s required of me is to remember to note on my calendar the date of the next round of fertilizing.

FUHGEDDABOUDIT! should be in stores soon. You can keep tabs on what it is, how to use it and where to find it on the Organic Mechanics website.