Today on Day 52 in Tentlandia: Molasses
Hello again everyone and thank you for visiting. I wanted to type about mixing my nutrients and a little carbohydrate I mentioned back on Day 18. I’m about to try molasses for the first time so if my plants keel over and die there will be no mystery. But the reality is a lot of people use it so how terrible an it be. I’m still in my experimental stage in learning to grow so if this crashes, it will suck, but I will survive. I’ve read that some people use sugar cane, honey, or corn syrup but I’ll be using unsulphured molasses.
I try to make mixing as easy as possible so rather than have to do a lot of shaking, I like to turn the molasses into a solution that will mix better with my gallon jug. I heat a little bit of water or just use clean water running through a keurig, water from the tap may be hot enough. You don’t need much at all as you’ll see below, just enough in a glass so your spoon can be submerged for stirring. DO NOT USE BOILING WATER. I just thought I should scream that. By the way, you can use this same trick when making powdered iced tea or lemonade…turn the powder into a solution with a little hot water, then mix it with the bulk of cold. No sugary chunks and 100% less stirring.
Anyway back to Molasses…which, by the way, smells horrible.
I have heard/read people using anywhere from 1 teaspoon to 2 tablespoons per gallon, I’ll be using a sloppy teaspoon. I’ll be adding this just once per week. Not every feeding.
Get your water temped…
Take however much you use…
Mix it in…
Compare it to one you didn’t do yet.
Like I mentioned earlier I use Dyna-Gro Nutrients. I like it simple and this stuff seems to go a long way for what I need.
I take 1 gallon of my RO water @20ppms I forget the pH, but it’s a 6.8-ish by memory. I add between 1ml-2ml of Cal-Mag to make up for having only 20ppms…but I add it AFTER the silica.
I add my silica first (because it tells me to) which is Protekt in this case, and shake my mix.
I then add the rest as needed: Bloom, Mag-Pro, Cal-Mag and now Molasses solution.
I shake that, pH it and adjust from there. My Week one flower feeding at about 90% came in at 4.9 pH. Yeah.
I added about 3ml of pH UP to my gallon and that brought it to 6.1.
Whatever you do, pH your water last.
This is my feeding schedule, I use the “Drain to Waste” measurements.
Cal-Mag and Molasses are add-ons. But I feed at about 80%-90% so I have room
Who knows. I don’t expect any problems. They looked fine 3 hours after feeding, the morning will tell more.
And finally a green pic…
