Straight up don't use molasses straight on the soil. Use it to feed the bio in a areated tea solution..i.e. A hand full of worm casting soil or a fistful of bonemeal, guano, kelp etc in a gallon jug of water, I use reverse osmosis but tap does well too as long as the dissolved solids are not too high. A good fish tank aerator and a few fine bubble diffusers does the job. You'll procreate a soil solution that kicks ass and won't burn a damned thing..just don't overwater, that kills a soil grow. Use molasses straight up and the bio that do their thing upon command from the root zone will instead feed directly on the molasses thereby ignoring what the roots are asking for. I learned this way and i couldn't figure why my leaves and stems started to go pale and wouldn't respond to my rx. Let the bio in your tea consume the molasses first then soak your soil with it and you'll be golden. No way this won't work. Now I have combined this & that, these & those and ended up with a "sharp" aroma. You'll pull back ..dump those that catch your nose.
I've premixed my soil with worm castings and guano before I started this grow, which I do with all my grows. This is my first time ever using molasses on a grow, wanted to try it out before my next run and work out the kinks see if it's worth adding to the mix. Which is why I picked out my two smaller "experimentals" for the dry molasses sprinkling, just in case things go "uh oh".
It's dried molasses, and I followed the package destructions which said "sprinkle on soil" so yea, maybe a mistake maybe not. I'm sure in a couple days I'll know. I know with the liquid there's a mix with water method. Store I shop at had dry not liquid so that's why I went with the dry.
When my larger more developed ones are ready for watering I might make some molasses tea for them. I still have some worm castings from when I mixed up my soil. I might make a casting molasses water mix or just keep it molasses for now. Probably going to change my mind on that before watering day. Just going to see how the little ones do before I get all hog wild with the molasses though.
I'm super careful about the over watering, I learned that mistake a few years ago, before i found out about RIU and all the glorious information here. Thankfully my tap water here seems to dialed in for cannabis, straight from faucet to measuring cup to plant so for that part I'm good to go.
