In this session of
beluga Satisfies His Curiosity
Molasses - What's the deal?
So, we've probably all heard mention of using it as an amendment/fertilizer.
Either...
• the plants absorb the sugars for their own use
• it helps to feed beneficial microbes in the soil
• it provides a natural mineral nutrient additive
Simple enough logic.
But, I heard mention that... No. That logic is flawed and, in reality...
• the sugar molecules in that form are too large for plant roots to absorb, and
• your feeding the beneficial microbes in the soil also feeds harmful microbes in the soil
• the mineral content that they have is likely already in your soil in adequate levels
Also simple logic.
Especially the microbe part.
Every... thing! is teeming with microbes (
). Good, bad, benign. And, in soil mechanics, your aim is to create a healthy population of good microbes so that they maintain an ecosystem that is favorable to plant roots.
Adding something like the sugars readily available in molasses would only prove to create a 'bloom' - a frenzy of feeding and accelerated reproduction - that could easily imbalance your soil microbiome and give harmful microbes a leading edge.
From
this consumer article:
I'd love to find more technical articles on that. It proved hard for me to get the right key words in my searches to bring up anything significant.
I'd also love to find more on the sugar molecule size and the uptake of any sugars, but, as far my logic would take me, you really don't have to look much further than the wikipedia articles on
photosynthesis and
roots give yourself a correlative reason as to why plants might not absorb sugars in a form like that of molasses through their roots.
A little bit on the action of sugar uptake that roots do have can be found in
this article.
I believe that is to say that they (roots) utilize certain sugars to aide in their general absorption and, when damaged, they leak those sugars to prevent the loss of nutrients. Those sugars can then be later reabsorbed.
Now, one critical thing I'd be remiss to not mention is its (molasses) action as a control for root knot nematodes, a plant disease/contamination.
From
this article.
So, basically, they haven't found it to be effective enough to be practical yet.
My takeaway from all of this is that...
Molasses belongs in the pantry, not in the nutrient line-up.