Molasses As Marijuana Fertilizer? Organic Fertilizer Tricks For Your Grow.

[Author and Medical Marijuana Grower Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes book here, or for the Amazon Kindle . You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here. Protect your privacy!]

Perhaps some of you home growers (or those interested in starting your own grow) have heard of using molasses to improve growth and increase bud size, etc. What’s the story behind this… Will molasses “sweeten up” your buds?

The benefit of using a molasses solution for your cannabis crop is twofold – molasses is rich in vitamin B6, magnesium, potassium, and manganese. Vitamin B6 may not interest your plant very much (directly) but the nutrients magnesium, potassium, and manganese are important for healthy plant growth. In our eBook “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, we go over the importance of these nutrients, and how to spot deficiencies and treat them during your grow.

Using molasses is a great alternative to chemical fertilizers, and for novice growers, you’re much better off using molasses or compost tea to fertilize – with chemical fertilizers, it’s very easy to kill your plants through “nutrient burn” if you aren’t careful with dosage!

The key to the entire idea is that by watering with a molasses solution, you are not only feeding additional nutrients to your plant, you are feeding the microbes in your soil. Yes, the microbes do the heavy lifting here! By sustaining a healthy microbiological environment in your soil, these microbes continue to break down organic material in your soil, making it available to your plant. So in fact, the sugars in the molasses are not there to “sweeten” your buds, but to sweeten the life of microbes and getting them to work harder for you!

I’ll make 3 simple points about using molasses for your grow, and you can’t go wrong:

1. Use only unsulphured molasses! The sulphur dioxide (a preservative) in sulphured molasses will damage the delicate balance of microbes in your hard-won soil (see our post here and eBook for soil “recipes” for optimizing vigorous natural plant growth)
2. As a rule of thumb, use 1 Tbsp/ gallon (1 tsp. / liter) of lukewarm water (not hot!) to dissolve the molasses. This solution should be further cooled to room temperature before watering your plants with it. Don’t water seedlings with molasses, wait until the plants have developed their second set of leaves, and they’ll be ready to handle it.
3. Molasses solution is probably not the best choice for an outdoor grow, as the sweet smell may lure in deer or other moochers who would take a bite out of your plant, or at least burrow in the soil and damage the roots. A compost tea would be a better choice for outdoor application. Indoors, the odor of compost tea (or manure tea!) is sometimes unpleasant, making molasses a better choice for this reason, as well.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out our blog. Bookmark the site, spread the word, and be sure to order our eBook; it will all but guarantee success in your cannabis cultivation project, large or small!

best regards, Glenn Panik

[Author and Medical Marijuana Grower Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes book here, or for the Amazon Kindle . You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here. Protect your privacy!]