Spellbinding Molasses – marijuana growers guide to soil sweeteners. Part 2

Why Molasses?

The rationale nutrient manufacturer’s have discovered molasses is the unquestionable fact that it is a useful source of carbs to excite the expansion of favourable micro-organisms. Carbohydrate is truly merely a fancy word for sugar, and molasses is the best sugar for horticultural use. People who’ve read some of our previous essays know that we are gigantic fans of promoting and nutritive soil life, and that we give credit for a significant slice of our growing success to the awareness we pay to building a prospering micro-herd to work in concert with plant roots to digest and assimilate nutriments. We actually do buy into the old ecological gardening proverb – Feed the soil not the plant. Molasses is a good, quick energy source for the diverse types of microbes and soil life in a compost pile or good living soil. As we announced earlier, molasses is a carbon source that feeds the favourable microbes that create larger natural soil fertility. But, if giving a sugar boost was the sole goal, there would be lot’s of choices. We could even go with the old Milly Blunt story of using Coke on plants as a kid, after all Coke would be a good source of sugar to feed microbes and it also contains phosphoric acid to provide phosphorus for bolstering roots and inspiring blooming. In our eyes though , the first thing that makes molasses the best sugar for rural use is it’s trace minerals. As well as sugars, molasses contains significant amounts of potash, sulfur, and a range of micronutrients. Because molasses comes from plants, and as the producing processes that create it remove generally sugars, most of the mineral nutrient elements that were contained in the first sugar cane or sugar beet are still present in molasses.

This is an imperative factor because a carefully balanced supply of mineral nutriments is necessary for those constructive beasties to survive and prosper. That is one of the systems we have discovered to very successful ecological gardening, the micronutrients found in organic amendments like molasses, kelp, and alfalfa were all gleaned from other plant sources and are efficiently available to our soil and plants. This is particularly vital for the soil micro-herd of animals who rely on little amounts of those trace minerals as catalysts to make the enzymes that create biochemical transformations. That last sentence was our fancy way of asserting – it’s actually the monsters in live soil that break down organic fertilizers and feed it to our plants. One last benefit molasses can offer to your garden is it’s capability to work as a chelating agent. That could be a systematic way of asserting that molasses is one of those wondrous enchanting substances that may convert some chemical nutrients into a form that is generally available for critters and plants.

Chelated minerals can be soaked up without delay and remain available and stable in the soil. Instead of spend a long time and effort explaining the relations between chelates and micronutrients, we’re going to quote one of our fave sources for explaining soil for systematic laymen. Micronutrients happen, in cells as well as in soil, as an element of huge, complicated 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 middle of the bigger molecule. The finely balanced interactions between micronutrients are complicated and not absolutely accepted. We do know that balance is crucial ; any micronutrient, when present in unwarranted amounts, will change into a poison, and certain deadly elements, like chlorine are also necessary micronutrients. For this reason natural, organic sources of micronutrients are the best method of supplying them to the soil ; they’re present in balanced quantities and not responsible to be over applied thru inaccuracy or stupidity. When employed in naturally chelated form, excess micronutrients will be locked securely away and stopped from interrupting soil balance. Excerpted from The Soul of Soil by Grace Gershuny and Joe Smillie that isn’t advertising hype either, no product being sold there. That is just the words of a couple of writers who’ve spent their lives studying, building, and nurturing soils. Molasses’ capability to act as a chelate explains it’s presence in organic stimulant products like Earth Juice Catalyst.

Chelates are renowned for their abilities to unlock the potentiality of manure, and some smart biological farmers we all know are using chelating agents ( like Humic Acid ) to permit them to make dramatic cuts in standard levels of manure application. A technique to observe this reaction at work is usually 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 straightforward nail for example ) in that solution for a couple of weeks. The chelating action of the molasses will take away the mineral components of the rust and hold them in that claw formed molecule that Grace and Joe just described. As we’ve commented on somewhere else, it is not always feasible to find good information regarding the manure advantages of some products that are not always produced as plant food. But we’ve also revealed that by taking a careful look at nutritive info provided for products like molasses that may be consumed by humans, we can get a pretty nice glance at the nourishment we expect a plant to get also. There are lots of brand’s of molasses available, so please don’t look at our use of a selected brand as an endorsement, our choice of Brer Rabbit molasses as an example is just due to our familiarity with the product, one of our Grandmother’s preferred this brand.