I'm no expert at any sort of gardening. I can just tell you my brief experience.

I have successfully grown plants indoors in window boxes with some kind of cheap potting soil from the K-mart. That stuff has little white rocks of some type of manufactured fertilizer, and worked like a charm. I knew nothing, put the seeds in, watered them, and got loads of herbs and greens out of it for months.

A couple of months ago, I started a new bunch of plants with this Miracle-Gro organic stuff. The plants are alive, but not healthy at all, and the growth rate is extremely slow in comparison with my original batches. I'm a terrible gardener, and there may be explanations for that apart from the soil... but maybe not. All the other variables are the same, insofar as I know.

The soil did burst out with loads of bugs before too long, so I had the same problem as the other reviewers in that regard. I originally thought that they were some kind of drosophila, but I guess they're fungus gnats. I tried to control them by organic means, and was marginally successful for some time, but then it just got out of hand. By the time I was thinking about hiring a bunch of lizards to eat them, I just gave up and hit 'em with some pyrethrin dust. That mostly took care of the problem, but there are still a few of the flies around and I'm waiting to see if the population rebounds. If it does, I'm just going to dump the whole mess out and start over.

There may be a good use for this soil, but it's just not working out for me. I'm not so much into the challenge of organic gardening; I just want free, fresh greens every day. If you know what you're doing and want the stuff for the complimentary compost bugs, more power to you.

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Update: 1/25/13

After repeated treatments with the dust, adjusting the watering cycles, and smashing gnats every day I finally pitched my window boxes out the window into a snowbank. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks to make sure there are no adult gnats still hanging around, and then try planting again with different soil.

I should note that the plants I threw out of the window still looked like sickly seedlings. They survived, but never really grew.

Don't buy this garbage.
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I'm no expert at any sort of gardening. I can just tell you my brief experience. I have successfully grown plants indoors in window boxes with some kind of cheap potting soil from the K-mart. That stuff has little white rocks of some type of manufactured fertilizer, and worked like a charm. I knew nothing, put the seeds in, watered them, and got loads of herbs and greens out of it for months. A couple of months ago, I started a new bunch of plants with this Miracle-Gro organic stuff. The plants are alive, but not healthy at all, and the growth rate is extremely slow in comparison with my original batches. I'm a terrible gardener, and there may be explanations for that apart from the soil... but maybe not. All the other variables are the same, insofar as I know. The soil did burst out with loads of bugs before too long, so I had the same problem as the other reviewers in that regard. I originally thought that they were some kind of drosophila, but I guess they're fungus gnats. I tried to control them by organic means, and was marginally successful for some time, but then it just got out of hand. By the time I was thinking about hiring a bunch of lizards to eat them, I just gave up and hit 'em with some pyrethrin dust. That mostly took care of the problem, but there are still a few of the flies around and I'm waiting to see if the population rebounds. If it does, I'm just going to dump the whole mess out and start over. There may be a good use for this soil, but it's just not working out for me. I'm not so much into the challenge of organic gardening; I just want free, fresh greens every day. If you know what you're doing and want the stuff for the complimentary compost bugs, more power to you. =====
Update: 1/25/13

After repeated treatments with the dust, adjusting the watering cycles, and smashing gnats every day I finally pitched my window boxes out the window into a snowbank. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks to make sure there are no adult gnats still hanging around, and then try planting again with different soil. I should note that the plants I threw out of the window still looked like sickly seedlings. They survived, but never really grew. Don't buy this garbage. =====