Can i put molasses on my garden?

[mosstrooper]

I went to my local farm shop this afternoon trying to cadge a polycube (1000 LITRE IBC) or two, they said i could have the ones that had been used for molasses storage as they where unsaleable afterwards.

So i get my tank and it has between 5-10 gallons of molasses in the bottom. I know its not toxic and i only want the tank for rain water storage, but what can i do with all this molasses?

Ill probably have to make it a bit runnier with hot water so im not sure how well it will store, so, can i use it on my garden in any way?

 

[supermanlives]

rinse with hot water the fill rest with cool water and feed away. depends on the kind of molassis. mine has potassium,calcium,iron,magnesium all stuff plants need. i dont know the size of your container and how much molaassis is actually there . so dont overdo it . i use a tbsp per gallon outdoors

 

[BPJR]

I use it towards the end of flowering at roughly 1 tbs per gallon. Great stuff

 

[mosstrooper]

mm, thanks guys, i have maybe 10 gallons in the bottom of a 250 gallon container. So i probably have enough to water every grow in Scotland.

 

[BPJR]

Yeah that might last you awhile. Not sure what the shelf life is one Molasses but you may try putting it in a sealed bottle or jar for storage. Also some do advocate using it in the veg cycle too.

There is some good info in this thread.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=172063&highlight=molasses

Cheers,
Bobby

 

[Sheriff Bart]

the thing is once you dilute it at all, its gunna be food for yeast and any bacteria and you are gunna wind up makin a big bucket of wine/vinegar if you dont use it all soon or right away, so it would prob be best to try and get as much as whats left out and only add molasses to the water you are using currently, cause like i said i wouldn't expect to let 250gal of molasses water sit around terribly long

 

[mosstrooper]

the thing is once you dilute it at all, its gunna be food for yeast and any bacteria and you are gunna wind up makin a big bucket of wine/vinegar if you dont use it all soon or right away, so it would prob be best to try and get as much as whats left out and only add molasses to the water you are using currently, cause like i said i wouldn't expect to let 250gal of molasses water sit around terribly long

This is as i suspected, But is it possible to only partially dilute it, so its still pretty concentrated, and thus use the sugar as a preservative?

Its so thick at the bottom, it no longer runs.

BPJR, yes, im sure you can use it in veg too, it is after all very rich in micro nutrients (i suppose thats why they feed it to cows in winter).

 

[Sheriff Bart]

yea you can probably dump a gallon of boiled water or really hot water and get it flowin again, and then maybe re-boil it down if its too runny still and to sterilize it and then jar it up or fill up a bucket and store it. idk how concentrated it has to be exactly except it needs to be pretty much enough sugar to be a thick syrup thats saturated with sugar