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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] seed starting for home gardeners

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  • From: "Allan.Balliett" <allan.balliett AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] seed starting for home gardeners
  • Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:15:45 -0500

Molasses is a great starter fertilizer. (one-two oz per gallon of water)
Molasses is a mineralized sugar with complex carbs that works well
to give plants a good start. It has some humates and other complex
carbs which trends the biology to probiotics and away from damping off disease
which likes simple sugars.

Bill - Just a note here, organic farm consultant Bob Shaffer, who works from Bob Cannards Farm in NoCA, states that using more than just a little molasses on the soil can be counterproductive because it can lock up the biological activity in the soil as surely as a plowdown can. In other words, the soil biology becomes so enamoured with eating molasses that N is no longer available to plant roots and won't be until the molasses has all been consumed.

This, of course, is probably totally meaningless in a sterile starting mix, but I thought I should share.

So...molasses makes a great bio-stimulant in a fertilizer drench but, as I understand (and I've actually seen this) more, or more frequent, is not better.

Also, as a long time biodynamic greenhouse farmer I wanted to point out that in biodynamic theory and usually, in my experience, in practice, weed teas are usually brewed as monocultures ie nettle tea, comfrey tea, thistle tea and not as a mishmash of whatever weeds fit in a barrel. Perhaps this is just tradition? But perhaps its how the diluted fertilizer makes more of the right nutrients available to the plant when applied? Or maybe nutrients from one 'weed' will 'lock up' the nutrients from another weed, reducing bio-availability. I dunno, but I thought it might be worth bringing up. (Also, the mono 'weed' teas work so well that it's hard to imagine a reason for not using them.)

Thanks for this list of potential fertilizers!

-Allan in WV




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