I mix a teaspoon per gallon and water with it once or twice a week.


Now, to confuse you further, here is a post from the OG boards before they crashed about molasses:

Sweet Organic Goodness - Magical Molasses

"There are a number of different nutrient and fertilizer companies selling a variety of additives billed as carbohydrate booster products for plants. Usually retailing for tens of dollars per gallon if not tens of dollars per liter, these products usually claim to work as a carbohydrate source for plants. A variety of benefits are supposed to be unlocked by the use of these products, including the relief of plant stresses and increases in the rate of nutrient uptake. On the surface it sounds real good, and while these kinds of products almost always base their claims in enough science to sound good, reality doesn’t always live up to the hype.

We are well known for our distrust of nutrient companies like Advanced Nutrients who produce large lines of products (usually with large accompanying price tags) claiming to be a series of “magic bullets” - unlocking the keys to growing success for new and experienced growers alike. One member of the three_little_birds grower’s and breeder’s collective decided to sample one of these products a while back, intending to give the product a fair trial and then report on the results to the community at Cannabis World.

Imagine, if you will, Tweetie bird flying off to the local hydroponics store, purchasing a bottle of the wonder product - “Super Plant Carb!” (not it’s real name) - and then dragging it back to the bird’s nest. With a sense of expectation our lil’ bird opens the lid, hoping to take a peek and a whiff of this new (and expensive) goodie for our wonderful plants. She is greeted with a familiar sweet smell that it takes a moment to place. Then the realization hits her. . .

Molasses! The “Super Plant Carb!” smells just like Blackstrap Molasses. At the thought that she’s just paid something like $15 for a liter of molasses, our Tweetie bird scowls. Surely she tells herself there must be more to this product than just molasses. So she dips a wing into the sweet juice ever so slightly, and brings it up to have a taste.

Much the same way a sneaky Sylvester cat is exposed by a little yellow bird saying - “I thought I saw a puddy tat . . . I did I did see a puddy tat . . . and he’s standing right there!” - our Tweetie bird had discovered the essence of this product. It was indeed nothing more than Blackstrap Molasses, a quick taste had conformed for our Tweetie bird that she had wasted her time and effort lugging home a very expensive bottle of plant food additive. Molasses is something we already use for gardening at the Bird’s Nest. In fact sweeteners like molasses have long been a part of the arsenal of common products used by organic gardeners to bring greater health to their soils and plants.

The fertilizer companies are like the bumbling Sylvester in many ways, but rather than picturing themselves stuffed with a little bird, they see themselves growing fat with huge profits from the wallets of unsuspecting consumers. Let us assure you it’s not the vision of yellow feathers floating in front of their stuffed mouths that led these executives in their attempt to “pounce” on the plant growing public.

And the repackaging of molasses as plant food or plant additive is not just limited to the companies selling their products in hydroponic stores. Folks shopping at places like Wal-Mart are just as likely to be taken in by this tactic. In this particular case the offending party is Schultz® Garden Safe All Purpose Liquid Plant Food 3-1-5. This is a relatively inexpensive product that seems appealing to a variety of organic gardeners. Here’s Shultz own description of their product.

“Garden Safe Liquid Plant Foods are made from plants in a patented technology that provides plants with essential nutrients for beautiful flowers and foliage and no offensive smell. Plus they improve soils by enhancing natural microbial activity. Great for all vegetables, herbs, flowers, trees, shrubs and houseplants including roses, tomatoes, fruits, and lawns. Derived from completely natural ingredients, Garden Safe All Purpose Liquid Plant Food feeds plants and invigorates soil microbial activity. Made from sugar beet roots! No offensive manure or fish odors.”

That sure sounds good, we will even go as far as to say we agree 100% with all the claims made in that little blurb of ad copy. But here’s the problem, Shultz isn’t exactly telling the public that the bottle of “fertilizer” they are buying is nothing more than a waste product derived from the production of sugar. In fact, Schultz® Garden Safe 3-1-5 Liquid Plant Food is really and truly nothing more than a form molasses derived from sugar beet processing that is usually used as an animal feed sweetener. If you don’t believe a band of birds, go ahead and look for yourself at the fine print on a Garden Safe bottle where it says - “Contains 3.0% Water Soluble Nitrogen, 1.0% Available Phosphate, 5.0% Soluble Potash - derived from molasses.”

The only problem we see, is that animal feed additives shouldn’t be retailing for $7.95 a quart, and that’s the price Shultz is charging for it’s Garden Safe product. While we don’t find that quite as offensive as Advanced Nutrients selling their “CarboLoad” product for $14.00 a liter, we still know that it’s terribly overpriced for sugar processing wastes. So, just as our band of birds gave the scoop on poop in our Guano Guide, we’re now about to give folks the sweet truth about molasses.

Why Molasses?

The reason nutrient manufacturer’s have “discovered” molasses is the simple fact that it’s a great source of carbohydrates to stimulate the growth of beneficial microorganisms. “Carbohydrate” is really just a fancy word for sugar, and molasses is the best sugar for horticultural use. Folks who have read some of our prior essays know that we are big fans of promoting and nourishing soil life, and that we attribute a good portion of our growing success to the attention we pay to building a thriving “micro-herd” to work in concert with plant roots to digest and assimilate nutrients. We really do buy into the old organic gardening adage - “Feed the soil not the plant.”

Molasses is a good, quick source of energy for the various forms of microbes and soil life in a compost pile or good living soil. As we said earlier, molasses is a carbon source that feeds the beneficial microbes that create greater natural soil fertility. But, if giving a sugar boost was the only goal, there would be lot’s of alternatives. We could even go with the old Milly Blunt story of using Coke on plants as a child, after all Coke would be a great source of sugar to feed microbes and it also contains phosphoric acid to provide phosphorus for strengthening roots and encouraging blooming. In our eyes though, the primary thing that makes molasses the best sugar for agricultural use is it’s trace minerals.

In addition to sugars, molasses contains significant amounts of potash, sulfur, and a variety of micronutrients. Because molasses is derived from plants, and because the manufacturing processes that create it remove mostly sugars, the majority of the mineral nutrients that were contained in the original sugar cane or sugar beet are still present in molasses. This is a critical factor because a balanced supply of mineral nutrients is essential for those “beneficial beasties” to survive and thrive. That’s one of the secrets we’ve discovered to really successful organic gardening, the micronutrients found in organic amendments like molasses, kelp, and alfalfa were all derived from other plant sources and are quickly and easily available to our soil and plants. This is especially important for the soil “micro-herd” of critters who depend on tiny amounts of those trace minerals as catalysts to make the enzymes that create biochemical transformations. That last sentence was our fancy way of saying - it’s actually the critters in “live soil” that break down organic fertilizers and “feed” it to our plants.

One final benefit molasses can provide to your garden is it’s ability to work as a chelating agent. That’s a scientific way of saying that molasses is one of those “magical” substances that can convert some chemical nutrients into a form that’s easily available for critters and plants. Chelated minerals can be absorbed directly and remain available and stable in the soil. Rather than spend a lot of time and effort explaining the relationships between chelates and micronutrients, we are going to quote one of our favorite sources for explaining soil for scientific laymen.

“Micronutrients occur, in cells as well as in soil, as part of large, complex organic molecules in chelated form. The word chelate (pronounced “KEE-late”) comes from the Greek word for “claw,” which indicates how a single nutrient ion is held in the center of the larger molecule. The finely balanced interactions between micronutrients are complex and not fully understood. We do know that balance is crucial; any micronutrient, when present in excessive amounts, will become a poison, and certain poisonous elements, such as chlorine are also essential micronutrients.
For this reason natural, organic sources of micronutrients are the best means of supplying them to the soil; they are present in balanced quantities and not liable to be over applied through error or ignorance. When used in naturally chelated form, excess micronutrients will be locked up and prevented from disrupting soil balance.”
Excerpted from “The Soul of Soil”
by Grace Gershuny and Joe Smillie

That’s not advertising hype either, no product being sold there. That’s just the words of a pair of authors who have spent their lives studying, building, and nurturing soils.

Molasses’ ability to act as a chelate explains it’s presence in organic stimulant products like Earth Juice Catalyst. Chelates are known for their ability to unlock the potential of fertilizers, and some smart biological farmers we know are using chelating agents (like Humic Acid) to allow them to make dramatic cuts in normal levels of fertilizer application.

One way to observe this reaction at work would be to mix up a solution of one part molasses to nine parts water and then soak an object which is coated with iron rust (like a simple nail for instance) in that solution for two weeks. The chelating action of the molasses will remove the mineral elements of the rust and hold them in that “claw shaped” molecule that Grace and Joe just described.



The How’s of Molasses

Undoubtedly some folks are to the point where they are ready for our flock to “cut to the chase.” All the background about molasses making and the various kinds of molasses is good, and knowing how molasses works as a fertilizer is great too, but by now many of you may be thinking - isn’t it about time to learn how to actually use this wonder product?! So this section of the “Molasses Manual” is for our birdie buds who are ready, waiting, and wanting to get going with bringing the sticky goodness of molasses into their garden.

Molasses is a fairly versatile product, it can serve as a plant food as well as a an additive to improve a fertilizer mix or tea. Dry molasses can be used as an ingredient in a fertilizer mix, and liquid molasses can be used alone or as a component in both sprays and soil drenches. Your personal preferences and growing style will help to decide how to best use this natural sweetener for it’s greatest effect in your garden.

We will try and address the use of dry molasses first, although we will openly admit this is an area where we have little actual experience with gardening use. We’ve certainly mixed dry molasses into animal feed before, so we’re not totally unfamiliar with it’s use. Folks may remember from our earlier description of the various kinds of molasses that dry molasses is actually a ground grain waste “carrier” which has been coated with molasses. This gives dry molasses a semi-granular texture that can be mixed into a feed mix (for animals) or a soil mix (for our favorite herbs). Dry molasses has a consistency that was described by one bird as similar to mouse droppings or rat turds, (folks had to know we’d fit a manure reference in here somehow).

The best use we can envision for dry molasses in the herb garden is to include it in some sort of modified “super-soil” recipe. As we admitted, the use of dry molasses in soil mixes isn’t something we have personal experience with, at least not yet. We are planning some experiments to see how a bit of dry molasses will work in a soil mix. We believe that moderate use should help stimulate micro-organisms and also help in chelating micronutrients and holding them available for our herbs. The plan is to begin testing with one cup of dried molasses added per 10 gallons of soil mix and then let our observations guide the efforts from there.


Another option for molasses use in the garden is it’s use alone as a fertilizer. The Schultz Garden Safe Liquid Plant Food is a perfect example of the direct application of molasses as a plant food. Garden Safe products are available from a variety of sources, including Wal-Mart. Although we consider them overpriced for a sugar beet by-product, Garden Safe products are fairly cost effective, especially compared to fertilizers obtained from a hydroponics or garden store, and they can serve as a good introduction to molasses for the urban herb gardener.

Here are the basic instructions a gardener would find on the side of a bottle of this sugar beet by-product - Mix Garden Safe Liquid All Purpose Plant Food in water. Water plants thoroughly with solution once every 7-14 days in spring and summer, every 14-30 days in fall and winter. Indoors, use 1/2 teaspoon per quart (1 teaspoon per gallon); outdoors, 1 teaspoon per quart (4 teaspoons per gallon). 32 fluid ounces (946ml). Contains 3.0% Water Soluble Nitrogen, 1.0% Available Phosphate, 5.0% Soluble Potash derived from molasses.

In our own experience with Garden Safe Liquid fertilizers, we’ve used a pretty close equivalent to the outdoor rate on indoor herbs with some good success. Our best application rate for Garden Safe 3-1-5 ended up being around 1 Tablespoon per gallon ( 1 Tablespoon = 3 teaspoons). Used alone it’s really not a favorite for continuous use, since we don't see Garden Safe 3-1-5 as a balanced fertilizer. It doesn't have enough phosphorous to sustain good root growth and flower formation in the long term. It’s best use would probably be in an outdoor soil grow where there are potential pest issues. Animal by-products like blood meal and bone meal are notorious for attracting varmints, so Garden Safe sugar beet molasses fertilizers could provide an excellent “plant based” source of Nitrogen and Potassium for a soil that’s already been heavily amended with a good slow release source of phosphorous, our choice would be soft rock phosphate.

Blackstrap molasses could also be used in a similar fashion, as a stand alone liquid fertilizer for the biological farmer who needs to avoid potential varmint problems caused by animal based products. But, we really believe there is a better overall use for molasses in the organic farmer’s arsenal of fertilizers. Our suggestion for the best available use, would be to make use of the various molasses products as a part making organic teas for watering and foliar feeding.

It will come as no surprise to our audience that molasses is a product we find very useful as an ingredient in Guano and Manure teas. Most bat and seabird guano's are fairly close to being complete fertilizers, with the main exception being that they are usually short in Potassium. Molasses is turns out is a great source of that necessary Potassium. As we learned earlier, molasses also acts as a chelating agent and will help to make micro nutrients in the Guano more easily available for our favorite herbs.

A good example of a guano tea recipe at the Bird’s Nest is really as simple as the following:
1 Gallon of water
1 TBSP of guano (for a flowering mix we'd use Jamaican or Indonesian Bat Guano - for a more general use fertilizer we would choose Peruvian Seabird Guano.)
1 tsp blackstrap or sugar beet molasses
We mix the ingredients directly into the water and allow the tea mix to brew for 24 hours. It’s best to use an aquarium pump to aerate the tea, but an occasional shaking can suffice if necessary and still produce a quality tea. We will give you one hint from hard personal experience, make sure if you use the shake method that you hold the lid on securely, nobody appreciate having a crap milkshake spread over the room.

Some folks prefer to use a lady’s nylon or stocking to hold the guano and keep it from making things messy, but we figure the organic matter the manure can contribute to the soil is a good thing. Using this method we feel like we are getting the benefits of a manure tea and a guano top-dressing all together in the same application. If you prefer to use the stocking method, feel free to feed the”tea bag”leftovers to your worm or compost bin, even after a good brewing there’s lots of organic goodness left in that crap!

We also use molasses to sweeten and enrich Alfalfa meal teas. Our standard recipe for this use is:
4 gallons of water
1 cup of fine ground alfalfa meal
1 TBSP blackstrap or sugar beet molasses
After a 24 hour brew, this 100% plant-based fertilizer is ready for application. Alfalfa is a great organic plant food, with many benefits above and beyond just the N–P-K it can contribute to a soil mix or tea. We do plan to cover Alfalfa and it’s many uses in greater detail soon in yet another thread. We prefer to mix our alfalfa meal directly into the tea, but many gardeners use the stocking”tea bag”method with great effectiveness, both work well, it’s really just a matter of personal preference.

foliar feeding is the final use of molasses we'd like to detail. Foliar feeding, for the unfamiliar, is simply the art of using fine mist sprays as a way to get nutrients directly to the plant through the minute pores a plant”breathes”through. It is by far the quickest and most effective way to correct nutrient deficiencies, and can be an important part of any gardener’s toolbox.

Molasses is a great ingredient in foliar feeding recipes because of it’s ability to chelate nutrients and bring them to the “table” in a form that can be directly absorbed and used by the plant. This really improves the effectiveness of foliar feeds when using them as a plant tonic. In fact it improves them enough that we usually can dilute our teas or mix them more “lean” - with less fertilizer - than we might use without the added molasses.

Of course it is possible to use molasses as a foliar feed alone, without any added guano or alfalfa. It’s primary use would be to treat plants who are deficient in Potassium, although molasses also provides significant boosts in other essential minerals such as Sulfur, Iron and Magnesium. Organic farming guides suggest application rates of between one pint and one quart per acre depending on the target plant. For growing a fast growing annual plant like cannabis, we’d suggest a recipe of 1 teaspoon molasses per gallon of water.

In all honesty, we’d probably suggest a foliar feeding with kelp concentrate as a better solution for an apparent Potassium shortage. Kelp is one of our favorite foliar feeds because it is a complete source of micronutrients in addition to being a great source of Potassium. Kelp has a variety of other characteristics that we love, and we plan that it will be the topic of it’s own detailed thread at a future date. But, for growers that cannot find kelp, or who might have problems with the potential odors a kelp foliar feeding can create, molasses can provide an excellent alternative treatment for Potassium deficient plants at an affordable price.




Molasses For Organic Pest Control


One final benefit of molasses is it’s ability to be used in the control of a couple of common pests encountered in gardening. The most commonly known use of molasses is it’s ability to help control Fire Ants, but we’ve also found an internet reference to the ability of molasses to control white cabbage moths in the UK, so molasses could be an effective pest deterrent in more ways that we are aware.


So there you have it, not necessarily straight from our mouths, but simply one more potential use we’ve discovered for molasses, with at least one testimonial for it’s effectiveness. As we said before, the use of molasses as an foliar spray, in addition to it’s potential use as a pest deterrent, would also serve to provide some essential nutrients directly to our plants, and would especially serve as an effective boost of Potassium for plants diagnosed with a deficiency in K. Healthy plants are more resistant to the threat of pests or disease, so molasses really is a multi-purpose organic pest deterrent.



And didn’t your mother ever tell you that molasses is good for you?”

If your Mother’s or Grandmother’s didn’t tell you about the sticky goodness of molasses, you’ve heard all about it now. Like our Guano Guide was designed to be a fairly comprehensive look at manures, we hope this look at soil sweeteners gives folks a thorough look at the uses of molasses in their garden. Hopefully now everyone knows the how’s and why’s of the uses of this sweetener for the soil.

It looks like the last thing to add is the where’s. If you are of the theory that your local hydro shop owner isn’t rich enough yet, then please by all means go and purchase an expensive carbo load product, but don’t complain that I didn’t warn you that it’s likely little more than Blackstrap Molasses. Hey, spending it there keeps the money recirculating in the economy and is preferable to burying it in a hole in the backyard. However, if you are a grower who wishes to be a little more frugal, there are certainly cheaper alternatives.

We’ve been known to recommend the complete group of Earth Juice fertilizers as a convenient and effective line of liquid organic fertilizers for home herb gardeners. We’ve grown using all thier products including: Bloom, Grow, Microblast, and Catalyst (Xatalyst in Canada! ) Many other’s here at CW also report great success and satisfaction with their products. Well, if folks look at the ingredients in Catalyst, one of the first things they will see is molasses. There are some other goodies in there like kelp, oat bran, wheat malt, and yeast, but we’re thinking that molasses is the main magic in EJ Catalyst."

In organic gardening, molasses is an excellent amendment to your nutrient mix. It is used as a carbohydrate source to feed the beneficial microbes in your soil. This helps create a healthy, thriving, living soil, which is essential because the beneficial microbes turn the organic material into a useable food source for the plants to ingest.

Molasses is also used as a micronutrient. It contains various vitamins and trace minerals.

I use molasses through out the entire life cycle of my plants. I’ve heard people talk of ‘flushing’ with molasses to make your buds ‘sweeter’, but I think that is flawed. If you are seeing a benefit in using the molasses during the final week of flower, my guess is that is due to the extra boost of potassium(k) found in molasses.

from Blacky the GROWING GURU

WHY USE SUGARY SUPPLEMENTS?
PEOPLE FEED THEIR PLANTS SUGARS all the time without knowing it and not always understanding why. You give your sweetheart a bouquet of roses for Valentine’s Day and before they are put into the vase, sugar is added to the water to extend their bloom. Some “old school” gardeners will add molasses to their nutrient solution during the flowering period. Actually, just by adding fulvic acid, and humic acid, to your nutrient mix you are giving your plants the building blocks for sugars.
by Matt LeBannister
MAXIMUM YIELD USA November / December 2007 63
Most growers do not even know that there is a meter, called a Brix meter, that is used to measure the level of sugars in the leaves of plants. It is generally understood that the higher the level of sugars within a plant’s tissue, the healthier the plant is and the better the yield will be.
Knowing this, the question should not be, “Why add a carbohydrate supplement to my nutrient solution?” but simply, “Why haven’t I added one already?”
To understand why you should give your plants one of the sugary supplements on the market, you should become a little more familiar with the way plants produce and use sugars.
Almost all plants use sugars as their main source of fuel. They transport these sugars along with water and other elements throughout their systems, either for food or to create amino acids for biosynthesis to fuel cellular respiration. Maple trees are a great example of how plants use sugars. Their sugary sap is famous at breakfast tables worldwide, but that sap is really the food the maple tree has begun to store to survive the winter to come.
Most plants are photoautotrophs, which means that they synthesize their own food directly from inorganic compounds using photons, the energy from light. They do this using a process called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis comes from the Greek word “photo,” meaning light, and “synthesis,” meaning to put together. The inorganic compounds are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O), and the energy source is sunlight. The end products include glucose, a simple sugar, and oxygen (O2).

Then, through a process called carbon fixation, ATP (adenosine triphosphate),AND? a high-energy molecule CO2 (carbon dioxide)
are used to create sugars. Some sugars produced, such as glucose, are simple sugars or monosaccharides. They are easily broken down by the plant and are generally used for energy. Other sugars produced, such as cellulose, are complex sugars or polysaccharides. Polysaccharides consist of a chain of two or more sugars and are usually used for lipid and amino acid biosynthesis. Polysaccharides are also used as a fuel in cellular respiration. Cellulose specifically is used as the building material for all green plants. It is the main component of all green plant cell walls.
Through the examination of the process of photosynthesis, we learn just how important the sugars produced through this process are. The sugars and starches are vital to the plant. They are essential for cellular preparation, to maintain the plants metabolism and vigor. The sugars are even the building blocks that keep the very cells of the plant together. Now it is understood that plants have a great big “sweet tooth” and are specialists at making the sugars they need.
So why then should we be feeding them more on top of all this? Simply put, flowering plants are burning these carbs trying to make large fruit or vegetables, or big beautiful blooms, faster than a marathon runner trying to win a race. Not to mention that the process of photosynthesis, which produces the sugars, itself takes a lot of energy. By adding one of the organic carbohydrate supplements to your nutrient solution the carbohydrates that have been allocated to the flowering process will be replenished more easily. This will save your plant the energy it would need to create those sugars itself, and your plant can focus more of its energy on the flowering process.
Also, many beneficial bacteria and fungi (aka carbon-fixing bacterial fungi) will live on the sugars and will break down the sugars for the plant. This, again, allows the plant to use energy usually spent breaking down sugars for other processes. The more beneficial bacteria and fungi, the easier nutrients are absorbed by the roots. All this leads to improved flowering and overall health of the plants.
When choosing the supplement for your plants remember the old saying, “You are what you eat.” The same goes for your plants. Look for something organic because organic sugars will improve flavor and smell better than anything that inorganic.
There are also some sugars that are more important to your plants than others. Xylose and arabinose are two of those sugars. Both are sugars naturally produced by plants. They are also monosaccharides, which means they are simple sugars and, therefore, used more easily by the plant.
Glucose should be the main ingredient of the product because it is the main product of photosynthesis. Glucose is a monosaccharide that is used for energy and for starting cellular respiration in the plant. The name “glucose” comes from the Greek word “glykys,” which means sweet, with the suffix “ose,” which denotes that it is a carbohydrate. Glucose is critical in the production of proteins and in lipid metabolism. Glucose is also used as a precursor for the synthesis of several important substances, such as starch and cellulose. Starch is a way in which plants store energy and cellulose makes up most of the structural parts of plants.
Fructose is also a monosaccharide and is a main component of most tree fruit, berries, and melons. It is the sweetest naturally occurring sugar and is twice as sweet as the disaccharide sucrose, which consists of glucose and fructose bonded together.
The disaccharide maltose is also an important sugar because enzymes break it down into two glucose molecules.
All of the above sugars are produced naturally by plants. By adding a supplement containing these simple and complex sugars to a well-balanced nutrient, a plant will increase the levels of sugars in the leaves and throughout the plant. This will let the plant use its energy more efficiently, allowing more energy to be focused on producing large fruit and bigger blooms. These sugars will also improve the taste of the end product while giving fuel to beneficial bacteria and fungi.
Using sugar supplements with carbon-based fulvic acid and humic acid bring great benefits to your plants with no downside. Knowing this and how the plants produce and use these sugars makes using them simply great growing technique.

Nice article from Maximum Yield.

So I can take a tablespoon of my liquid glucose and mix it with a gallon of water and feed my plants? Cool! Diabetics have a secret weapon.LOL

\

Kind of an expensive way to do it though, wb.

__________________
Life,
j-angel

aka GP purrie kittie attack cat!


My Little Grow LST'ing w/Hardware

My Outdoor Odyssey 2008 BONSAI MUMS

My Little Grow Indoor To Outdoor 2009

the other frequently refered to molasses post on GP

Molasses: The Organic Miracle Additive....

thought these two threads should be linked

my daughters liked this joke when they were a bit younger

hold your tongue with your fingers and say molasses on the table

corny but I still like it, do men ever outgrow sophomoric humor? 'cause I am getting kind of old