Can i use Molasses in a hydro system? and much do i use? If it cant be done let me know. or is there something else that i can use?
A good rule of thumb with any hydro system is to only use nutes and supplements recommended by the hydro system company or the dealer you bought your system from. Most people on this forum recommend against it for various reasons, the main one being that it’ll clog up your plumbing! I agree. If you really wanna try using molasses in your grow, try switching over to soil. Molasses does make a noticeable positive difference in applications to soil and combined with good microbes, you’ll be amazed! I know this is more easily said than done, if you’re comfort zone is set in hydro and you’re not at all familiar with soil growing. Most personal growers grow because they like to push the inside of the envelope and think outside the box; its part of their nature. But even if its not, I highly recommend trying a comparison experimental grow. Start with fresh new seeds of your choice with one batch in your existing hydro set up and then next to that, if your light footprint is big enough start the same seeds in a two pot soil set up. Read up on the basics of soil growing but its not rocket science and if you’re good at growing in hydro, which is actually much more challenging then growing in soil, you’ll actually discover an amazing amount of nute recipes that include molasses.
I believe all of us growers are renegades at heart and we grow even when we know we’re breaking the law. But bad laws were meant to be broken! Even if small personal grows are legal in your neck of the woods, the simple (or as complicated as you want to make it!) ACT of growing marijuana indoors is an act of exploration and thinking outside the box. That’s how I went from a small hobby grower to a large-scale commercial one.
The reason I recommend setting up a hydro and soil-with-molasses grow in the same room under the same lights is that its much more easy to compare. Simply do what you’re already doing with your hydro system and right beside it set a two pot soil grow using the molasses nute recipe of your choice. I only recommend trying this if you enjoy checking your plants every day. A lot of hydro growers are not true growers and don’t like visiting their plants every day and do as little as possible and spend as little time as possible in their gardens—all they care about is the results. But I’m a “hands on” kind of guy and actually enjoy working with my plants every day. Doing so, makes you, encourages you to think outside the box and try new things.
For example, when I went from a small personal grower to a large commercial one, we decided hand-trimming was just not viable with hundreds of plants to harvest and trim. We got those big auto-trimmers with blades than could trim dozens of pounds of Bud per hour. But after a few years after experimenting with every new machine to hit the market (and they all used blades back then) we discovered they were damaging the quality of our Buds. Then, just about 4 years ago this revolutionary new automated trimming machine hit the market called a Tom’s Tumble Trimmer. It didn’t look like much and seemed a far stretch that it could claim to perfectly trim 60lbs of Bud per hour without even using blades! But being that my spirit has always been experimental and pushing the inside of the envelope I had the balls to try it out. My commercial grower friends down in California were raving about it and urged me to give it a whirl even though it looked just too simple to do the job right. It was thousands of dollars less then all the other big complicated bladed machines and my friends told me it never broke down, or needed any maintenance or even any cleaning and was an amazing work horse. After just one harvest we were totally impressed and my gang was thankful I tried it out. We were so happy with the purity of it, and its amazing speed at trimming perfect hand-trimmed-looking Buds while preserving over 90% percent of the trichomes and resin, we ended up getting 4 more.
So thinking outside the box and pushing the envelope when it comes to growing can be a good thing as long as you’re willing to learn from your failures. But if you try a good molasses recipe and with good soil growing technique you really can’t fail! But trying to run molasses through a hydroponic system is a disaster just waiting to happen! And so is going against all the good people here urging you avoid using molasses in a hydro system because even in soil, if you deviate from a proven recipe you’re going to see some strange things happening with your plants that you’re not going to be too happy about.
