leebone

Sup everybody, has anyone ever tried this stuff called "sweet"? Or any sweetener additive? Looks like its full of sugars or molassis or something like that. Anyway it looks like it might be cool to try, I just wonder is it worth the $? Does it make much of a difference? Does it taste good? Is it possible to make your own?

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bluecheese

Welcome to the Garden leebone!

Here are a couple of threads worth reading.

One about Sweet: https://www.gardenscure.com/420/mari...are-sweet.html

One about molasses: https://www.gardenscure.com/420/orga...-goodness.html

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johnny-0

I go with the BS mollasass.Cheap but it contains many nutes your plants can use.

katchafire

i am currently using liquid carboload and sweet leaf from advanced nutrients. the stuff works great. my previous cycle i only used the carboload and my ladies fattened up nicely. this cycle i added the sweet leaf and i am finding new aromasthat were not present in the previous cycle. the a.n. nutes are a bit pricey but they are very easy to work with. with more experience under my belt i am looking for a more cost effective line with the same results, but then again aren't we all...

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Bumble

I'm not exactly sure why people are expounding the virtues of MOLASSES.....maybe because it is cheap. And you can't blame the nutrient companies for packaging cheap molasses and charging a premium price because they just want to make $$$.

BUT.....consider this! Without getting technical (I certainly can get technical if someone wants to talk biology and chemistry).

Molasses is mostly sucrose (ordinary sugar) as the primary sugar in molasses. Sucrose is a fructose + a glucose molecule. Sucrose is relatively useless to plant nutrition. Plants make it but they don't use it. Now, the rationale is that microbial action (bacteria, yeasts, fungus) in the soil will breakdown the sucrose back to the basic sugars (glucose and fructose) thru enzymatic action. This is true but still is mostly useless to the plants. The reason the microbes breakdown the sucrose is because they want the glucose for themselves.....essentially the bacteria, fungus and yeasts "eat" the glucose for their own energy requirements. A little bit escapes for the plant, but what a waste.

If you don't believe me just ask any winemaker. Sucrose plus water plus yeast will yield alcohol (anaerobic) or acetic acid (aerobic). The sugars are all "eaten up" by the yeast.

What you want are the simple sugars. You can still utilize molasses, but not because of the sugar content, only because molasses contains other minerals and compounds. Here's what I use:

1) HONEY. Honey is mainly glucose and fructose with less sucrose and also about 10% assorted other sugars and carbohydrates. The bees collect sucrose from the plants and break it down to glucose and fructose thru their enzymes. In addition, honey contains a lot of other compounds including some plant hormones. Great Stuff!

2) MAPLE SYRUP. The real stuff. If you can get it from a guy who taps trees, even better. Try to get the 'late season" syrup. If not, then grocery store maple syrup will do. Maple syrup is pure plant juice. It contains a high concentration of glucose and fructose, and a lot of excellent minerals, trace minerals, organic acids, and all kinds of wonderful stuff.

3) DEXTROSE POWDER. Dextrose is another name for glucose. Dextrose is 97% pure glucose. Glucose is what you want. It is the simplest of sugars and is utilized by all living creatures as the primary energy source.

So here's my formula:

Using a measuring spoon (eg, 1/4 cup)

1 part water heated but not boiling add 2 parts powdered dextrose and stir to dissolve (basically makes a glucose syrup).

When dissolved add:

1 part molasses
2 part honey (or 3 parts honey if omitting the molasses)
1 part maple syrup

Heat but not boil and stir. Allow to cool and store.

How to use: Use at a rate of 2ml per litre of watering solution. Don't overdo it. Use once or twice during the veg cycle and maybe every 10-14 days during the bloom cycle. You are going to get more microbial growth. Make sure your growing media is not waterlogged or you will end up with plants growing in an anaerobic swamp.....not a good thing. Plants need root oxygen and stimulating a ton of microbes will deplete the oxygen quickly. The one good thing is that glucose will react with the water and produce a mild hydrogen peroxide (thus the supposedly antibiotic properties of honey). I do reccomend that you use water that has been aerated by a bubbler or at least add some H2O2.....trust me, the plants need that oxygen when using sugars.

Now you've got a product that's 10 times better than anything you can buy from any manufacturer at a fraction of the cost.

penguin

Sucrose is the primary medium of energy exchange within the plant. Monosaccharides mostly get converted to disaccharides prior to getting loaded into the phloem.

Glucose is the main fuel for respiration.

Neither of these sugars cross the cell membrane passively, they need to be actively transported. Active transport of sugars accross root cell membranes goes entirely the other way: a very large % of the sugar produced by the plant ends up getting exuded by the roots. Adding sugar (in any form) to the root zone with the idea that it's directly useful to the plants is bringing coals to Newcastle. Plants are autotrophs.

However sugars are very useful to the microrganisms in the root zone, which is why plants exude so much of it. A has been pointed out, various plant-derived sugar complexes also have a lot of minerals that are useful to the plant: as the microbes decompose the goo, the minerals become available to the plant. This can be a reasonable source of micronutrients in organic gardens.

Honey costs more than blackstrap molasses, and pure maple syrup is ridiculously expensive. I'd really need to see some convincing evidence that either produces better end results than molasses before dumping them in the dirt.


penguin

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Bumble

I'm not exactly sure where you are getting your information that sugars are not absorbed by the roots. In fact the opposite is true and has been well documented going back to the 1960s+ when carbon isope labelled sugars can be easily studied.

It is true that there is a carbon loss by the plant at the root zone. The flow of carbon from roots into the rhizosphere represents a significant C loss from plants. However, roots have the capacity to recapture low molecular weight C from soil although this is in direct competition with soil microorganisms. Sugars are absorbed in the apical segment of the root by diffusion and by proton transfer. It is found that glucose was preferentially taken up by the protoplasts over sucrose and other hexoses. Glucose uptake shows a biphasic dependence on external glucose concentration with saturable and linear components. In contrast, sucrose uptake only showed a linear kinetic curve.

Glucose and fructose are manufactured by the plant, not in respiration, but in photsynthesis, whereby the plant combines the mono-sugars to sucrose. In turn, the sucrose is utilized in the respiration processes 80% in maintenance respiration, 20% in new growth respiration, starch production). Glucose is also utilized in the transpiration processes, the net products being water and CO2.

Regardless of all this technical jargon, there is some question as to the value of adding sugars to the root zone.

Adding sugars increase the microbial population of soil. This increased biological mass competes directly with the plant for the availability of sugars that a gardener has added to the soil substrate. Unless the microbes are nitrogen fixing (produce nitrates), the value of increased microbial growth is questionable. Perhaps some chelated minerals exuded by microbes would be of value. In fact, when adding sugars to the medium, the gardener will notice that there is an initial decrease in plant growth.......the microbial population is increasing quickly and exponentially using up the nitrogen and sugars that are in the soil. Until the population stabilizes, the plants are in direct competition for the nutrients with the microbes.

We all know that the only requirements for excellent, healthy plants and good yields are proper N/P/K and macro/micro minerals, along with environmental factors - photointensity and spectrum, temperature, humidity, O2, CO2. A gardener who's plants at are not thriving at optimum levels, will not experience much value in supplements sold by the over-priced companies. At least, not until the basic requirements are optimized. However, a gardener who is already growing at a high level of excellence may benefit from using various supplements.

Molasses is derived from beet root.....the value of which is mariginal (at best). Even if it is cheap, it's still a waste of money.

Why do I use honey. Besides the sugars, honey contains a high concentration of pollen. Bee pollen is packed with many different nutrients: amino acids, antibiotic factors, DNA/RNA, enzymes, glucosides, hormones, minerals, vitamins and other ingredients not determined yet. Amino Acids/Protein. There are 22 amino acids in bee pollen, including all of the essential ones in highly-concentrated amounts. Being rich in phytochemicals, including flavonoids, carotenes and phytosterols, bee pollen provides a host of important antioxidants including lycopene, selenium, quercetin and beta carotene. There are 27 different minerals in pollen including calcium, magnesium, iron and potassium. As well as: boron,chlorine, copper, iodine, molybdenum, phosphorus, selenium, silicon, sodium, sulfur, titanium and zinc.
Finally, pollen is rich in plant hormones.

Why do I use Maple Syrup. Granted, Maple syrup contains a lot of sucrose. But it also contains amino acids, phenolic compounds, other organic acids,, minerals, salts, plant hormones, and other components essential for the plant to maintain growth. This is only logical, since the sap is basically the maple tree's storage of essential compound for when the tree becomes active in the spring (new leaf growth, new flowers).

Still think using honey and maple syrup is not a good idea? The cost really is not an issue, the ingredients are still a lot cheaper than buying a diluted packaged carbo product from a manufacturer. And, if a garder is going to use sugar loading, then why not use the best!

johnny-0

Yikes!Nice discussion guys.Im thinking if it aint broke dont fix it.Im staying with my bs molassas.

toke'a'bowl

im using sweet. and so far i like it. my last grow wasnt even flushed and it still smelled and tasted damn good. i havent not used sweet is the only problem so i dont know what its doin better. but its not like its bad. and its only about 20$ a quart, a little pricy but i mean the people who made SWEET ment to and the people that made BSM didnt mean for it to sweeten your buds (not saying BSM dont work )

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