Preparing soil with molasses.

I am going to prepare my soil with alfalfa cubes, worms and molasses. I am just wondering will the molasses kill the worms and how much molasses do I need to add for preparing the soil before he winter?

I'm not really sure what you're asking. Molasses pretty much needs to be diluted with water then added to the soil.

The alfalfa can certainly kill the worms if they are added too soon. It gets really hot breaking down.

Your best bet would be, add the alfalfa to the soil, water well with the molasses/water (1tsp-1tbl/gallon of water), allow the alfalfa to breakdown for a couple of weeks, THEN add the worms.

Wet

Wetdog said:

I'm not really sure what you're asking. Molasses pretty much needs to be diluted with water then added to the soil.

The alfalfa can certainly kill the worms if they are added too soon. It gets really hot breaking down.

Your best bet would be, add the alfalfa to the soil, water well with the molasses/water (1tsp-1tbl/gallon of water), allow the alfalfa to breakdown for a couple of weeks, THEN add the worms.

Wet

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Couldn't have said it better.

How much alfalfa are you adding? I've composted straight alfalfa with nothing else and had worms thriving in the pile... Only problem was when the pile got too hot (thermally), never had problems with the pile getting to hot nitrogen wise, keep in mind it's only ~3% by weight and is one of the slowest organic amendments to mineralize. Worm bins generally receive newspaper (100% Carbon) and greens (very high nitrogen, some being 15%+), and they thrive in it - MUCH higher NPK to carbon ratio than alfalfa.

Neither the alfalfa nor the molasses should harm your worms imo - haven't hurt mine at least.

It's not the NPK of the alfalfa that makes it 'hot', but the Trican ... however it's spelled.

I feed it to my worms all the time, but I run it through a bokashi bucket first.

Real easy to see this, take a couple cups of alfalfa meal, a couple handfuls of EWC, mix it up and moisten with some molasses/water. Stick your finger in it the next day, it will be hot as hell.

This is also why alfalfa is good as a compost 'starter'. Gets everything going quick despite the relatively low N.

Wet

I think I'll try that. This is my first time preparing soil for a grow and I'm stoked. I'm gonna grow 5 super Lemon hazes, 3 afghans, and 5 purple strains. I want to get it absolutely perfect this year and I want to make sure they have enough nutes for all year. I'm going to leave them all summer and see what I get so I need to come up with a recipe good enough to give them what they need. I think I'm gonna use subcools super soil but im not sure how to incorporate it into raised beds. Any suggestions?

And im not sure how much alfalfa to use. I'm digging 3' holes..any suggestions on that also?

In my 65 gal smartpots (~3x3x1.5) I generally put 1/2 - 1 lbs. That's on top of the bonemeals, guanos, lama shit, kelp meal...

So are you saying I should add all my soil amendments first and then add the alfalfa bc the alfalfa breaks it down and gives the soil more oxygen?

I absolutely love growing and love new info like this. Keep it comin everyone!

3waygreatness said:

I think I'll try that. This is my first time preparing soil for a grow and I'm stoked. I'm gonna grow 5 super Lemon hazes, 3 afghans, and 5 purple strains. I want to get it absolutely perfect this year and I want to make sure they have enough nutes for all year. I'm going to leave them all summer and see what I get so I need to come up with a recipe good enough to give them what they need. I think I'm gonna use subcools super soil but im not sure how to incorporate it into raised beds. Any suggestions?

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Go easy with nutes, molasses is a chelating agent among many other things. If you use use too much, you'll lock-out N. Keep it simple, these are weeds, not orchids. Less is always better.

Good luck!

3waygreatness said:

So are you saying I should add all my soil amendments first and then add the alfalfa bc the alfalfa breaks it down and gives the soil more oxygen?

I absolutely love growing and love new info like this. Keep it comin everyone!

Click to expand...

Alfalfa is porous and thus displaces the soil and creates gaps that hold air. This is what is meant by aeration. For this to happen the alfalfa must be incorporated into the soil before hand.

Alfalfa is a great source of carbon. The microorganisms in the soil that are responsible for changing alfalfa meal (and all other organic amendments) from a non usable for into a usable form eat carbon and nitrogen at a ratio of 30:1. They are smart buggers and if they notice that the amount of carbon is low, they will actually slow the mineralization process and your amendments will never be broken down into a usable form. So by mixing alfalfa into the soil you are promoting the proper ratio of carbon to other nutrients so that your soil bacteria operates at peak performance.

This whole process happens slowly and needs time so you need to add the alfalfa into the soil early so that it has time to start.

Sunbiz1 said:

Go easy with nutes, molasses is a chelating agent among many other things. If you use use too much, you'll lock-out N. Keep it simple, these are weeds, not orchids. Less is always better.

Good luck!

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Molasses doesn't effect pH in soil... Chelation is a good thing, but unfortunately you won't get it from molasses

It's pretty hard to overdue it with true old school organics - with the exception of some miracle grow organic products and incorrectly brewed bat/seabird guano teas. They are definitely weeds though