using sugared water

Whatever1987 said:

Store bought, the reason I ask is because I live in Norway and can't find regular molasses anywhere here, i found them on the web for like 4-5usd but shipping is 40-50usd so i figured it's not worth it.

Another alternative for me is maple syrup which i have read that some people use.

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can you get honey easily? it may be cheaper than maple syrup

You can get molasses for less than $1/lb at most bulkfood stores..

molasses contain over 40% sucrose (big molecules) and honey contains 1-2% sucrose and about 98-99% glucose, fructose and maltose (small molecules), now i found that the leaves' stomata rather go for the small molecules, besides that honey contains part of the necessary trace elements found in fertilizers.

cbgreen said:

molasses contain over 40% sucrose (big molecules) and honey contains 1-2% sucrose and about 98-99% glucose, fructose and maltose (small molecules), now i found that the leaves' stomata rather go for the small molecules, besides that honey contains part of the necessary trace elements found in fertilizers.

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What do you think a good recipe would be? Do you water it in to your plants? Day 30 to 45 of flower is what i understand the window to use sugar?

you can use a carbohydrate source any time but throughout flower is best to increase taste and yield.

bicycle racer said:

you can use a carbohydrate source any time but throughout flower is best to increase taste and yield.

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What do you use, when?

me personally i use mollases 1 tablespoon a gal or carboload(advanced nutrients) or sweet(botanicare) as per directions on bottle. i use 1 or more of these products from 2 weeks from seed to 1 week from harvest. its not like ferts you can play around with when you use and dosage as its hard to hurt your plants this way. i have not used in any true hydroponic applications but i do use in coco or hempy applications without issue.

It's amazing how misinformed people are regarding the introduction of carbohydrates in horticulture! With all the legitimate information available on the internet people still retain the information put-forth by the misinformed.

1.) Plants cannot 'Directly' uptake carbohydrate molecules through their roots or from the stoma via topical foiler application. **It's not just that the carbohydrate molecules are to large/complex. plants do not possess a digestive system like ours to process the carbohydrates. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to break down carbohydrates. Without delving into the complexities of ATP plants product their own glucose during calvin cycle.
2.) Sugar, Molasses (Beet/Cane), Pepsi, Honey Pixistix, Smarties and whatever else the kids are doing these days does not directly make a plants flowers sweeter or bigger!
3.) Carbohydrates are not steroids for your plants! Introducing carbohydrates provide food for the living organism that help assimilate nutrients for the plant.

Put simply, the benefit of carbo-loading is to provide food for the Micro/Macro biological agents that exist next to the rhizome layer adjacent to the root of the plant or cultures existing on the surface of the leaf.

So... before you start packing Bubblicious in your soil or Skittles in your rez it should be considered that carbohydrates (CH20) are a broad group of chemical structures. Monosaccharides, Disaccharides, Polysaccharides. fructose, galactose sucrose, maltose.......amylose...... etc...etc. There are reasons for using cane and beet molasses above straight C&H processed sugar.. or better yet Dr. Pepper? Carbohydrates should be administered with added biological inoculates or in mediums that support this i.e. foxfarm Happyfrog, Roots organic soil etc. Inert fiber-less mediums/methods such as Hydroton, Perlite Aeroponics and NFT benefit very little from carbo-loading due to the organisms having little/nothing to hold on to. (adding coco-mat or rockwool to a rez is not a sufficient support infrastructure/habitat for the microbes) Foiler feeding carbohydrates is a useless endeavor unless you are administering biologicals simultaneously i.e. a product as in House&Garden's Magicgreen. It is also a good practice to promote beneficials by introducing inoculates that will assist to control the potential anaerobic biologicals that can develop when an abundance of food is present. It is ridiculous practice to Carb-feed more than once a week unless you want to make alcohol in your soil. Cycling the biologicals by loading every other week will provide very adequate results.
If you're interested in experimenting with carb-loading I suggest making a small investment with a product designed specifically for horticulture. Some of the products available from Humboldt Nutrients are a good place to start for both the biological base and the supporting regiment of carbohydrate food. $60 will take you through a decent sized cycle (8wk 10kw+) with out the risk of pouring gas on the fire that is Pythium, Rhizoctonia and Phytophthora... you know... the bad guys that share space with beneficials that feed from carbohydrates as well.

Dr. Pepper.....pfft! That's just Dumb!

whatever we know all this already its on many threads. i understand microbiology pretty well myself in soil at temps above 70 that small amount of sugar is processed very quickly soil has a massive surface area with a huge population of carbohydrate processing microbes. so whether you choose to use weekly or twice monthly its fine. bigger healthier root system bigger more fragrant buds put simply happy root system happy plants.

It's amazing how misinformed people are regarding the introduction of carbohydrates in horticulture! With all the legitimate information available on the internet people still retain the information put-forth by the misinformed.

1.) Plants cannot 'Directly' uptake carbohydrate molecules through their roots or from the stoma via topical foiler application. **It's not just that the carbohydrate molecules are to large/complex. plants do not possess a digestive system like ours to process the carbohydrates. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to break down carbohydrates. Without delving into the complexities of ATP plants product their own glucose during calvin cycle.
2.) Sugar, Molasses (Beet/Cane), Pepsi, Honey Pixistix, Smarties and whatever else the kids are doing these days does not directly make a plants flowers sweeter or bigger!
3.) Carbohydrates are not steroids for your plants! Introducing carbohydrates provide food for the living organism that help assimilate nutrients for the plant.

Put simply, the benefit of carbo-loading is to provide food for the Micro/Macro biological agents that exist next to the rhizome layer adjacent to the root of the plant or cultures existing on the surface of the leaf.

So... before you start packing Bubblicious in your soil or Skittles in your rez it should be considered that carbohydrates (CH20) are a broad group of chemical structures. Monosaccharides, Disaccharides, Polysaccharides. fructose, galactose sucrose, maltose.......amylose...... etc...etc. There are reasons for using cane and beet molasses above straight C&H processed sugar.. or better yet Dr. Pepper? Carbohydrates should be administered with added biological inoculates or in mediums that support this i.e. foxfarm Happyfrog, Roots organic soil etc. Inert fiber-less mediums/methods such as Hydroton, Perlite Aeroponics and NFT benefit very little from carbo-loading due to the organisms having little/nothing to hold on to. (adding coco-mat or rockwool to a rez is not a sufficient support infrastructure/habitat for the microbes) Foiler feeding carbohydrates is a useless endeavor unless you are administering biologicals simultaneously i.e. a product as in House&Garden's Magicgreen. It is also a good practice to promote beneficials by introducing inoculates that will assist to control the potential anaerobic biologicals that can develop when an abundance of food is present. It is ridiculous practice to Carb-feed more than once a week unless you want to make alcohol in your soil. Cycling the biologicals by loading every other week will provide very adequate results.
If you're interested in experimenting with carb-loading I suggest making a small investment with a product designed specifically for horticulture. Some of the products available from Humboldt Nutrients are a good place to start for both the biological base and the supporting regiment of carbohydrate food. $60 will take you through a decent sized cycle (8wk 10kw+) with out the risk of pouring gas on the fire that is Pythium, Rhizoctonia and Phytophthora... you know... the bad guys that share space with beneficials that feed from carbohydrates as well.

Dr. Pepper.....pfft! That's just Dumb!

It is ridiculous practice to Carb-feed more than once a week unless you want to make alcohol in your soil. Cycling the biologicals by loading every other week will provide very adequate results.

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Hey, thats not a bad idea.. The plants would suck the ethanol into the buds, and then you'd get both stoned and drunk when you smoked them right??
(Sorry, too tempting.. The way you describe it is the way I understand it..)

born2killspam said:

Hey, thats not a bad idea.. The plants would suck the ethanol into the buds, and then you'd get both stoned and drunk when you smoked them right??
(Sorry, too tempting.. The way you describe it is the way I understand it..)

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Yeah.... pretty sure that the ethanol would evaporate prior to combustion..If not a good pop due to combustion....

While we're on the topic Born2KillSpam, I was curious to get your thoughts on the difference of carbohydrate sources. Refined sugar water V.S cruder forms of Carbs. Does it make any difference? My logic tells me otherwise however, I would like to here your input on the topic.
-Best

While we're on the topic Born2KillSpam, I was curious to get your thoughts on the difference of carbohydrate sources. Refined sugar water V.S cruder forms of Carbs. Does it make any difference? My logic tells me otherwise however, I would like to here your input on the topic.
-Best

I dunno.. Until I see a nice experiment done by somebody I can trust to grow plants well, and uniformly that shows a real difference, I'd be saving my money.. Cruder carbs will contribute additional things that organisms need to thrive as they decompose.. I don't know what typical soil is lacking though if anything aside from the carbs needed to fuel those things.. I can only imagine soil itself, or compost takes care of everything else..
I do know that ordinary topsoil has enough nutrients in it to supply yeast with what they need to ferment a sugar wash to their limit fairly vigorously.. I did that a while back.. Made up two identical sugar washes, left one lacking all nutrient, and tossed a handful of soil in the other.. The clean one stalled at 9% abv after a week or so, and the one with the soil added stopped bubbling about 2 days earlier, fully fermented to 14%abv.. Granted yeast are protozoa, and we're more concerned with bacteria/fungi, but atleast its an anecdote..

sweetness... i thought the sugar water feedings were myths ... never again

ok either i'm higher than i thought or this thread is entirely indecisive. will someone please fill in my chart? please state which are based more on opinion or more on research, if possible please include some kind of reference to the research, also if it was in a scientific community or pot community.
..............................................good...............bad....
... sugar watering.....................[ ]................[ ]......
... sugar foliage spray...............[ ]................[ ].....
...simple carb watering..............[ ]................[ ].....
... complex carb watering..........[ ]................[ ].....
... simple carb foliage spray.......[ ]...............[ ]....
... complex carb foliage spray....[ ]................[ ]....
we can talk about combinations or each of these methods later. (i'm also a math geek. in case you are wondering, there would be a MINIMUM of 64 plants to have each plant having a unique feeding regiment. and then if you factor in the TIME that watering happens (sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight) you would get 512 plants bare minimum. this is a LOT of research! ideally you would set up at least 10 of each plant in order to obtain the most accurate average, which means 5,120 plants. and they would all have to be clones to start with, which means a pretty powerful clone farm, all origining back to a single mother. they should also be the same generation clone so you would have to grow the clones out linear-ly and keep them in the same conditions throughout. holly crap. i wish i could do this. i would so do this. i should take a horticulture class.
however, if there were enough knowledge divulged on the subject, you could just pick out a FEW of the 512 combinations based on personal bias or previous opinion pointing in that direction. do the opposites as well for a really good comparison (or a neutral) and that's probably around 200 plants, much more manageable for any grower comopared to 5,120 plants.)

and apparently tha was all an aside! hope you like my thoughts on the subject. anyway, can you guys fill in my chart?

i'm a very neat and organized seeker of information when i'm high. haha.

you are over watering your plants

turtleblood said:

ok either i'm higher than i thought or this thread is entirely indecisive. will someone please fill in my chart? please state which are based more on opinion or more on research, if possible please include some kind of reference to the research, also if it was in a scientific community or pot community.

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Here's some interesting links. Yes, most, if not all of folks' reports is based on opinion or anecdotal evidence which can not be verified. We all want to believe in some magic potion, but in the end, it's learning what makes a plant tick that counts. IOW, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

http://www.soils.wisc.edu/extension/hottopics/nonconventional.pdf

http://agguide.agronomy.psu.edu/cm/sec2/sec210.cfm

No matter what the crop or the additive used, this is what I keep hearing over and over again -

"The results of this trial suggest that the use of the nonconventional additives tested in this trial, under standard commercial agricultural practices on the soils at the Malheur Experiment Station, did not result in any crop production benefit. The low amounts of plant nutrients and humic acid supplied by the products at the rates tested cast doubt as to their value in crop production. Conventional soil or foliar-applied fertilizers for plant nutrient supplementation, or manure and compost applications for enhancing soluble humic substances, should be considered as economical alternatives."

http://www.cropinfo.net/AnnualReports/2000/onihumic00.htm

Ive been using gen hydros pineapple rush for 9 weeks now 2 teaspoons per gal.,in my e&f sys. using hydroton.I havent noticed any problems yet,my ph is pretty stable,the plants seem ok with it,I know the plants in the hydro have bigger calyxes,thicker leaves,and generally I think have more glands then the same plants grown in soil with out it .Im also using gh 3 part flora for nutes in both soil and hydro and approx. same ppms.
I havent had a sample yet still in flower. But sometimes I think I smell pineapple when I walk past the flower room.
I will probably continue using it,no harm no foul.......