Using Molasses with Cannabis and Other Ways To Enrich Your Soil

[0:05] What's up you amazing listeners? I'm Chronic from the Cannabis Chronicles on Instagram and YouTube, as well as the host of the "Homegrown Podcast" brought to us by Homegrown Cannabis Co. Be sure to get your top-notch cannabis seeds at www.homegrowncannabisco.com. In today's episode, I'll be discussing using molasses with cannabis and other ways to enrich your soil or medium.
 

[0:27] Be sure to follow along on whichever platform you're streaming from to never miss out, and pack a bowl or load a fat dab and let's blaze into some amazing information. Let's begin. In this first part of the "Homegrown Podcast", I'll be discussing the benefits of using molasses with cannabis. To start off, let's discuss the benefits of using about one tablespoon of
 

[0:47] molasses per gallon of water when feeding using molasses only. One tablespoon or 20 grams of molasses has the daily value of these nutrients within it, such as manganese at 13%, magnesium at 12%, copper at 11%, vitamin B6 at 8%, selenium at 6%, potassium at 6%, iron at 5%, and calcium at 3%. Those beneficial nutrients help feed your plants important micronutrients and macronutrients that
 

[1:18] cannabis craves. Along with providing nutrients for your plants to consume, you actually are providing simple sugars and carbohydrates using molasses. For growers seeking to make a plant quite resinous, simple sugars and carbohydrates are key in trichome production. Now another big benefit of feeding with molasses is that organic unsulfured blackstrap molasses is available pretty much anywhere for extremely cheap. It goes an incredibly long way and will feed
 

[1:45] a lot of plants. You can actually feed a plant with a proper well-mixed soil only water and molasses the entire grow with great success. Many of my clone grows in solo cups or three-gallon containers are just hotter mixed soils that I feed molasses and water to the entire run. I find myself having very frosty results and very
 

[2:06] terpene-heavy plants. Since molasses is full of sugar and carbs, it will also help the medicinal compounds be more rounded off as your plant will have the energy and fuel to create those compounds properly. The best thing about molasses is you can use the tiniest amount to help give seedlings or early sprouted plants a little extra sugar if they're looking light without overfeeding them.
 

[2:28] Along with that if you need to feed a super heavy feeding, you can do a double up on your molasses dose and really help give your plants a boost. Now on top of enriching your plants with loads of micronutrients and macronutrients it will crave, simple sugars and carbohydrates, organic unsulfured blackstrap molasses will replenish food in your grow medium for your
 

[2:47] microbeneficials to consume and ultimately excrete, which that's actually what your plant consumes, the microbeneficial excrement. Now it is very important that you do use organic unsulfured blackstrap molasses as there are various types of molasses. Sulfured or chemically altered molasses can leave chemical traces in your bud and even alter the flavors or taste profiles you would've found otherwise.
 

[3:13] This is why using organic unsulfured blackstrap molasses is my go-to and the best molasses for cannabis in my opinion. Now we are going to take a short break with @natehammer420 from Instagram as there isn't too much else to discuss on the benefits of molasses. It's fairly straightforward, and I would recommend adding molasses to your feed as it's extremely beneficial,
 

[3:34] extremely inexpensive, and works to produce much more resinous, aromatic, and flavorful medicine. So stay tuned as we take this amazing break with @natehammer420 from Instagram. I want to pause for a moment to tell you about a new range of homegrown seeds and where they have come from. When Isaac Newton coined the phrase, "Standing on the shoulders of giants," he was talking about the amazing minds that came before him.
 

[4:03] It's a phrase that embodies the homegrown collaboration with Steve D'Angelo, Kyle Kushman, Nikki Lastreto, and Swami Chaitanya. They are your giants. These legends are sharing more than just their vast amounts of knowledge. However, they also have a range of homegrown seeds we have lovingly christened Cultivars with Character. Each seed is a personal favorite, especially chosen pheno selected for
 

[4:24] resilience, reliability, and ease of growth. Basically, they're more forgiving phenotypes of classic time-honored cultivars with all of the quality. My advice, choose their seeds, stand on their shoulders, and aim high. It's exactly what they're here for. Head over to homegrowncannabisco.com for more details. And we're back from that amazing break with @natehammer420 from Instagram. Be sure to check him out as he does really amazing
 

[4:55] behind-the-scenes content with Homegrown Cannabis Co. In this segment of the "Homegrown Podcast", we'll be discussing how to enrich your grow medium, which includes feeding molasses as well. So remember to snag yourself a bottle of some organic unsulfured blackstrap molasses that we talked about in the first segment. Pack a nice big bowl for yourself or drop a big
 

[5:17] old dab and let's get into some more cannabis content. Let's begin. So as we talked about this in the first segment, molasses is absolutely wonderful to use for creating resin, flavors, smells, and other benefits. However, molasses also enriches the grow medium really well. For those growers using soil, you should understand that when growing in soil that you're not feeding your plants technically.
 

[5:39] You're actually feeding your soil. You essentially have to see what your plant tells you is missing from your soil and feed the soil those nutrients. Microbial life or microbeneficials and organisms are responsible for breaking down soil nutrients and various compounds you blend, top feed, or mix into your soil to feed your plants Cannabis plants feed by devouring the excrement of the microbeneficials or microbials that
 

[6:04] break down the inaccessible nutrients to make them accessible. So keeping your grow medium enriched and full of your microbeneficial's favorite food will help them increase their population, which ultimately increases how fast your nutrients are accessible to your plants. Microbeneficials such as mycorrhizae absolutely love sugars. If you check out the very first episode of the "Homegrown" podcast that I
 

[6:26] have with Organic Grower 0624, we talk all about this. I highly recommend giving that episode a listen to. Now these microbial life, they go crazy for any type of sugars. They do break down other stuff like bat guano, kelp meal, bone meal, blood meal, and things like that. However, sugars will always be devoured first. Sugars also help promote reproduction for microbeneficials, so this means
 

[6:51] feeding molasses will keep your soil enriched with accessible sugars for the microbeneficials to break down and use for reproduction. Using molasses also means that they aren't just breaking down simple sugar. They're actually consuming carbohydrates, calcium, magnesium, and other nutrients vital to cannabis development. This helps keep your medium full of all the vital nutrients that your plants are
 

[7:11] going to crave. Now some other great nutrients to top feed or mix into the soil to keep the soil enriched, well-fed, and well-blended as far as nutrients are concerned, is to add bone meal or blood meal into your medium. Bone meal will add a plethora of PK to your nutrient mix, as well as some nitrogen, whereas blood meal will be high in your
 

[7:30] micronutrients like calcium, magnesium, copper, and zinc, as well as being extremely high in nitrogen with trace amounts of PK. So it's always beneficial to add powder forms or liquid forms of these to your feed or soil to enrich the medium and offer various nutrients to your microbial life for them to break down. Now even for soilless and hydroponic growers, these principles
 

[7:53] can work if you are using organic feeds. However, if you're using more salt-based or synthetic blends that are instant access, this means the nutrients have already been made accessible for your plants, which you aren't reliant on bioactive life inside your medium to do the work. Instead, you need to keep an eye on your PPM levels and keep a well-rounded diet at all times accessible for your plants.
 

[8:15] This is why most soilless and hydroponic growers are on a weekly reservoir change schedule to increase or decrease week by week. Soilless growers just need to watch out for leaching, however, such as coco growers, where coco holds onto a lot more PK, so it requires more of that during the veg stage, but to be stable, you may not need to
 

[8:34] feed any in flower, as coco will leach PK out slowly after some time. So this is where with soilless and hydroponics, it's really up to the style of the grower, the setup, and most importantly, the specific nutrients you're actually choosing to use, as those will very much determine how you feed in those mediums, when you feed, and what you feed. Now for soil growers, it's really
 

[8:58] all about reading what your plant's telling you and adding specific amendments to keep the soil healthy and rich. The best thing about soil compared to the other mediums is that you can top feed your soil with more soil if it begins to run low. Not that you can't do that with water, it's just as over time keeping mothers, you'll see soil run out slowly.
 

[9:16] So being able to add more fresh soil, earthworm castings that are full of NPK and micronutrients, and maybe some bone meal or blood meal will keep that old soil flushed full of healthy and vital nutrients, so your microbial life don't overeat and starve to death. This means keeping a plant for a long term can be inexpensive and
 

[9:36] quite easy. Keeping up with feeding your soil is as important as feeding your plants, as going long periods of time without feeding or not feeding enough can really cause poor root health over time, which will affect the way the plant eats or grows due to lack of microbial life. So keeping a nice healthy soil that is aerated well, not
 

[9:54] overfed, full of microbials, and is full of sugars, carbs, micronutrients, and NPK is the best way to go about caring for your plants. Now using amendments like blood meal, bone meal, kelp, molasses, earthworm castings, or adding mycorrhizae to your feeds are all extremely beneficial. One massive step a grower can actually take to really pump out the microbial life in the soil or medium is to create compost
 

[10:21] teas, which essentially utilize all those nutrients that I just named off, however, you steep them in a tea bag for 24 hours with mycorrhizae and lukewarm water. This creates a compost tea that is full of accessible and inaccessible nutrients and lots of microbial life that will flush the medium and help boost the growth of the plants and uptake of the nutrients.
 

[10:44] I have plenty of videos on my YouTube channel, "The Cannabis Chronicles," on compost tea making. Be sure to check them out if you actually need a visual aid. Now aeration is key when creating a compost tea, as you'll be providing the air for the microbial life to actually breathe in the water medium. So you'll need a good air pump, some good air stones, a tea
 

[11:03] bag, a 5-gallon container, and a lid, and you're all set to make the world's finest poop stew. That's right. That's what Organic Grower, Mary Jane, and myself all call it. So now that you're familiar with poop stew, some good dry and liquid amendments to utilize like bone meal or molasses, and which molasses to choose, you are ready to enrich your medium to make some
 

[11:25] happy plants. I'm Chronic from "The Cannabis Chronicles" on Instagram and YouTube, and I do hope you enjoyed this episode of the "Homegrown" podcast, brought to us by Homegrown Cannabis Co. Be sure to follow along on whichever platform you're streaming from so you never miss out on any episode I post. If you'd like to get top-notch cannabis seeds,
 

[11:43] be sure to head over to www.homegrowncannabisco.com and browse their various strains. If you'd like to join in our free seed giveaways or our growing lives with Kyle Kushman and Nate Hammer, be sure to like Homegrown Cannabis Co on Facebook. Follow @homegrownworld on Instagram for behind-the-scenes content and daily posts. And if you're a grower that needs an easy way to document their grow, you can sign
 

[12:06] up for free at www.homegrowndiary.com and start documenting your grows with ease. I do hope you all have an amazing day. Much love, happy growing, and peace. If you enjoyed this video and want to learn more about growing your own cannabis at home, hit that like button, subscribe, and turn those notifications on to keep up to date with the amazing marijuana content Homegrown
 

[12:57] Cannabis Co. has to offer. See you next time.