About one year ago, I wrote an article here about Enviro Ice. Companies use this product to keep items cold for shipping. I receive it in my HungryRoot food deliveries each month. According to the company, you can use it this nitrogen-based product to fertilizer your plants. I considered trying it. However, for reasons explained in the article, I didn’t actually ever end up doing so. Nevertheless, many people have asked me what I think about using it. Therefore, I decided to scour the Internet for information from people who have tried it. Here’s what I found.

Why I Haven’t Tried Enviro Ice on My Plants

I don’t keep too many plants myself. I live in an apartment in San Francisco. Moreover, I’m not great with plants. As a result, I have to be careful to follow directions exactly if I have any chance of keeping plants alive. I’m just not intuitive about it like so many other people are. On more than one occasion, I’ve called my sister, who was a plant sciences major, to ask her what one of my plants might need.

There isn’t a lot of information out there about using Enviro Ice on plants. It’s something that even the company itself seems to be studying. Therefore, there aren’t great specific instructions. In other words, I can’t find anything that says, “use this amount of Enviro Ice this often to get good results for your plants.” There definitely don’t seem to be instructions for using it on specific plants. So, even though I still get Enviro Ice every week, I haven’t tried it on any plants. Instead, I put it down my sink drain as described in my original article.

The Big Questions

I turned to the Internet to find out what people are saying about using Enviro Ice on their plants. Mostly, I scoured Reddit, although there are a few other forum and blog posts about it that you can easily find in a Google search. A few key questions came up:

What Form of Nitrogen Is In Enviro Ice?

I confess that I don’t fully understand the science behind this. However, several people online have asked what form of nitrogen or nitrogen compound this product is or contains. Apparently there are different forms of it. The company says that Enviro Ice is “nitrogen based.” However, that doesn’t give information about the form of nitrogen, which would apparently be important for people seeking to use it on plants.

What Else Is In Enviro Ice?

This is the most frequent question. People who are going to use Enviro Ice on their plants want to know about ALL of the ingredients that might be in this product. Unfortunately, as far as I can find, we don’t have this information. There are two key problems that people bring up:

• Is there anything else in the product that could harm plants, soil, or other living garden things? Presumably, the answer should be no. After all, they advertise clearly that it’s safe to use in your garden. They state specifically on their website, “When thawed and diluted with water, the Enviro Ice coolant mixture is a safe, suitable fertilizer for both indoor and outdoor plants.” Nevertheless, without specific information about the ingredients in the product, we just have to take their word on its safety.
• Is there anything in the product that I don’t want to consume? In other words, if I’m growing fruits and vegetables that I plan to eat, is Enviro Ice safe for use? Obviously, people have a diverse range of food sensitivities. Therefore, this isn’t a simple question. Either way, we don’t have a clear answer on the ingredients yet.

Perhaps the Ingredients Are …

I asked ChatGPT if it could tell me what is in Enviro Ice. I’m not sure how accurate it’s information was, since I couldn’t find it elsewhere, but it claims: “The gel in Enviro Ice is made from a blend of natural ingredients, including seaweed extract, plant-based amino acids, and other plant-derived nutrients. ”

In a thread over on Houzz, user toxcruasadr said that they couldn’t find the ingredients. However, they suspect that it’s “probably ammonium nitrate solution, which is just nitrogen fertilizer.” Moreover, they say that the gel is probably “polyethylene glycol (PEG) which is actually a food ingredient.” That’s the best guess I was able to find online.

What Happens When You Use Enviro Ice on Plants?

Okay, so those are the questions that people have. Over on Reddit and around the web, I’ve found a few people who responded to these questions. They have tried the product on their plants and documented their experiences. The experience were varied. However, when looked at as a whole, they indicate that with proper dilution, Enviro Ice does work safely to help plants grow.

Enviro Ice Works on Plants When Diluted

User KimAlex17 shared on Reddit two years ago that it works great on their plants. They actually called the customer service number to ask about how to use it. They followed the recommendation to dilute the gel, using one gallon of water per 16 ounces of gel. They say that they have 77 happy plants.

Similarly, in the same thread, user Optimal_Cheetah3755 reports using it on a moth orchid plant. It sprouted new leaves and new roots. They say they use just 1-2 teaspoons of the gel per plant. They dilute that with water, although they didn’t say how much.

In Fact, It Might Be Great For Trees

In the same thread, user ISK_Reynolds tried the product on two young indoor trees. They used three packs diluted with two gallons of water. They put this on one of the trees, but not on the other one. The one that received the diluted Enviro Ice is thriving better than the one that did not.

Failure to Dilute Can Burn Plants and Soil

Several people reported that Enviro Ice didn’t work for them. They said it burned either the plant or the soil or both. However, in all cases, it seems that they either didn’t dilute the soil or didn’t sufficiently dilute it.

Can You Grow Plants in Just EnviroIce?

In the same thread, user AJ_Effendi talks about trying to grow water plants in just the gel. This is atypical. Most people are using it to fertilize the soil around their plants. This user found that some cuttings have survived well in the gel. Their stems are a bit squishy but above the waterline they do grow. That said, some died. It was a mixed experiment.

Additional Links:

• 5 Reasons To Use Fish Amino Acid On Your Plants
• Does My Brown Thumb Make Gardening a Waste of Money?
• 4 Cost-Effective Organic Garden Fertilizers

Every week, I receive food from Hungryroot. It’s a great service through which you can get meal prep or just general groceries. Much of the food needs to stay cold. Therefore, they put cold packs inside the box. They use an option called Enviro Ice. You can dispose of it in many ways, including apparently by using it as plant food. Should I do that?

What Is Enviro Ice?

Here’s what the Enviro Ice package looks like:

When it arrives, it’s frozen. It works just like any other cold pack for food. Apparently, you can simply reuse it if you want to do that. However, I don’t have a lot of use for cold packs. And I get one of these (which is probably about 9″ x 12″ every week. I certainly don’t need that many. So I need to figure out other ways to use them.

Options for Reusing / Recycling Enviro Ice

Here’s what the back of the package says:

All of this time, I’ve been doing the latter option. I leave the bag inside my sink until it’s no longer frozen. Then I cut it open and let it drain into the sink. The first time that I tried it, I was worried that it would clog the sink. But true to what the brand advertises, it does no such thing. It’s designed specifically to go down the drain. So I drain it, rinse the bag, and recycle the bag.

However, as I was doing this habitually last week, I re-read the package. I noticed that the first option is actually to use it as plant food. So, I got curious about that. Should I feed Enviro Ice to plants instead of to the drain?

Enviro Ice For Plants

According to their website, Enviro Ice is the only product of its kind. It’s a nitrogen-based product. This means that it’s good for plants. They say that you can pour the gel directly onto the soil. Alternatively, you can dilute it with water. There’s no particular benefit to the latter other than that it flows more easily.

They report that you get all of the benefits of nitrogen for your plants when you use this gel. It adds nutrients and improves growth. It’s food for your plants. They say that you can use it for both indoor and outdoor plants.

What’s My Hesitation?

All signs indicate that I should go ahead and try this in my own gardening efforts. So why am I hesitating at all? The truth is that I trust the product just fine, but I don’t trust my own instincts when it comes to planting. As I’ve confessed to you in the past, I don’t have a natural green thumb. I never really know what my plants want or need. I over-water and under-sun and all of the things that are bad for them.

So, what I’m worried about is that I won’t use Enviro Ice properly. Will I give the plant too much of it and not realize what’s happening until it’s too late? Will it change the balance of other things I give the plant (water, light, etc.)? If so, will it be able to correct that?

The great thing about gardening, though, is that the stakes are low. I already have the product. I can try it and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

Have you used Enviro Ice in gardening? What’s your experience been?

Read More:

• 5 Reasons To Use Fish Amino Acid On Your Plants
• 4 Cost-Effective Organic Garden Fertilizers
• Does My Brown Thumb Make Gardening a Waste of Money?