Lawn-Care Giant Targets a New Weed as Pot Industry Grows
Jim Hagedorn, chief executive officer of Scott's Miracle-Gro Co. P
hotographer: Tom Dodge/Columbus Dispatch via AP PhotoThis article is for subscribers only.
Growing up on New York’s Long Island, Jim Hagedorn would watch TV and see reports of marijuana busts. In the background, he’d sometimes spot bags of Miracle-Gro, the garden fertilizer invented by his father, Horace.
That recollection is particularly apt as the younger Hagedorn, now 59, considers plans for the company his father helped found, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., the world’s largest maker of lawn-care products. This month, Scotts bought a leading supplier of hydroponics, a technology that allows indoor cultivation of everything from tomatoes to pot without soil.