The Hows 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 - isnt 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 its 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. Weve certainly mixed dry molasses into animal feed before, so were not totally unfamiliar with its 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 (animals) or a soil mix. Dry molasses has a consistency that was described by one bird as similar to mouse droppings or rat turds, (folks had to know wed 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, like Vic High originally popularized for the cannabis community. As we admitted, the use of dry molasses in soil mixes isnt 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 its 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, weve 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 its really not a favorite for continuos use, since we dont see Garden Safe 3-1-5 as a balanced fertilizer. It doesnt have enough phosphorous to sustain good root growth and flower formation in the long term. Its 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 thats 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 farmers 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.
Since many of the folks reading this are familiar with our Guano Guide, 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 guanos 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 micronutrients in the Guano more easily available for our favorite herbs.
A good example of a guano tea recipe at the Birds Nest is really as simple as the following:
1 Gallon of water
1 TBSP of 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. Its 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 ladys 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 thetea bagleftovers to your worm or compost bin, even after a good brewing theres 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 NP-K it can contribute to a soil mix or tea. We do plan to cover Alfalfa and its 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 stockingtea bagmethod with great effectiveness, both work well, its really just a matter of personal preference.
The alfalfa tea recipe we described can be used as a soil drench, and also as a foliar feed. And foliar feeding is the final use of molasses wed 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 plantbreathesthrough. It is by far the quickest and most effective way to correct nutrient deficiencies, and can be an important part of any gardeners toolbox.
Molasses is a great ingredient in foliar feeding recipes because of its 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. Its 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, wed suggest a recipe of 1 teaspoon molasses per gallon of water.
In all honesty, wed 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 its 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.
That looks at most of the beneficial uses of Molasses for the modern organic or biological farmer. Just when you think thats all there could be from our beaks on the topic of molasses, that molasses and its sweet sticky goodness surely have been covered in their entirety, the birds chirp in to say, there is one more specialized use for molasses in the garden. Magical molasses can also help in the control of Fire Ants, and perhaps some other garden pests.