Sugar Water?

420AM&PM

Well-Known Member
Does adding sugar to the water you give your plant help at all? I've heard alot of talk about this but never found out the anwser .... :allgood:
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Good organic soil contains mychorrizae, micro-organisms that benefit the plant by helping the roots absorb nutrients.
Like yeasts, mychorrizae like sugars.
I wouldn't use regular table sugar though. I use unsweetened pineapple juice, other growers use molassas.
You don't need much. During the latter half of flowering I add 1 tablespoon of pineapple juice per gal/water.
Adding sugars especially helps during the "flush", the last 2 weeks before harvest when you stop using fertilizer for good-tasting bud.
Cut this amt. in 1/2 if you are growing in containers, and don't use during veg.
Don't use sugars if you are growing hydro.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Over the years I've heard lots of simply untrue "tips" on growing weed.
-Like hanging a plant upside down or plunging the roots into boiling water causes "thc to rush to the buds" to make it more potent.
Not true. THC is made at the bud sites, it doesn't "hide" in the roots or stalk.
-Stressing a plant by cutting off water or keeping a plant in total darkness for days before harvest "makes the plant think it's dying and it makes more THC".
Not true. For top quality buds keep the plant in the best of health. Not enough water causes a plant to wilt and that's detrimental to it's health.
-I've heard people recommend the following additives:
birth control pills
anti-depressents
baby formula
beer
menstrual blood
metal shavings
The only ones that would "work is beer (because it's sweet) and blood (because it contains N). But there are other much better things to add that are cheaper (in the case of beer) and less disgusting (in the case of mentrual blood).

Other things I've heard of people doing is driving a nail through the meristem to supply minerals. This helps a little but not because of added nutrients. You can accomplish the same thing by breaking the hurd which makes the plant stronger and aids in nutrient distribution.
Some people resommend "beating up " the plant. Again, the only way this might help is through breaking the hurd, but it's negative side-effects outweigh any benefits.

One thing that's NOT a myth, and something I recommend for outdoor grows is adding a little human piss to the nutrient solution. Not much--like 2 or 3 oz. per gal/water. But not if your on chem meds or use narcotics and not the first whiz of the day.

A new one I just heard a few days ago is to remove the outer bark from the lowest 1" of the meristem, just above ground level.
The guy that told me this claims it causes an explosive increase of THC.

THC exists primarily to make pollen stick. Once a plant has been pollinated it takes at least 3 weeks to make seeds, and seed production requires a lot of energy, so the plant won't "suddenly" make more THC if it "thinks" it will be dead in a matter of a few days.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

I like that this area is called "Dispelling Growing Myths", but people say these things are working....

Think of those microorganisms in dirt....how much sugar, be it glucose, fructose, or even sucrose....you really aren't going to find it in dirt. Too much stuff lives on this above the dirt, from insects to yeasts. It's not going into dirt. You can put this stuff into your plants, but whatever you might think, it ain't gonna help, but for the maggots!

And THC isn't to trap pollen. A lot of good pollen would do trapped on a leaf. The THC evolved long after this "higher plant" had developed its very successful reproductive strategy. A lot of other plants don't have THC, but get pollenated anyways. And I've grown enough to have had the plants and time to sit around and pick thousands of anthers out of calyxes, and I'll tell you that if the hairs have any THC to trap pollen, it certainly got there from the calyx and leaf exterior by accident.

THC and cannabinoids are more likely there to protect the seeds from predators, whether a sticky chem-deterrent, or psycho-toxin. All those terpenoids do a bit of repelling, too.

Sorry, but this is "Dispelling Myths".

There are no Santa Clauses or Tooth Fairies, really. Maybe poor impersonators and perpetrators of fanciful notions, but the road to hell is with such good intentions paved.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

from August '06 High Times.

By Jade Kine

I’ve got a sweet tooth for sugary, candy-flavored ganja. In fact, sugar is not only the cannabis plant’s source of energy for growth; it’s also the primary factor that determines how good your favorite herb will taste when you smoke it. In my many years of horticultural experimentation, I’ve tried many different sugar supplements to augment my plants’ health and flavor, and I want to share a few of my favorites. Some of this information will be a refresher course for seasoned growers, but I’d like to start at the beginning for the introductory grower and briefly explain the importance of sugar to plants. Plants make their own sugars (carbohydrates) through photosynthesis. Plants combine light energy (from the sun or a high-intensity discharge lamp) with water and CO2 from the atmosphere (or a CO2 tank or burner), and the result is sugar. This sugar is the essential source of energy that’s utilized for all cellular division and the formation of plant structures (i.e., huge, dank buds). Now, you can’t grow a plant in the dark by watering it with sugar, but under otherwise good growing conditions, you can supplement your nutrient solution with extra sugars to boost the natural levels created by photosynthesis and make your plants more vigorous and productive. The real icing on the cake, though, comes from the fact that a little extra sugar will improve not only the yield of your garden but also the flavor of your favorite herb.

For serious growers and/or gadget collectors, you can even measure the amount of sugar (on this scale, we call it “brix,” pronounced bree) in your plant with a device called a refractometer. Don’t shy away from the fancy name if you’re afraid of complicated devices; this tool is super-easy to operate. Using a sap extractor (or a pair of pliers), you can squeeze a drop of juice out of a leaf and then place it on the refractometer’s viewing plate. Look through the lens and you will see an obvious line running across a column of numbers. Brix readings above 12 indicate good plant health and a strong immune system. With a device like this, you’ll impress your friends (“Oooh…a refracto-what?”) and also be able to detect when a change in your feeding program or environment affects your crop as the readings go up or down. Frequent checks of brix content in leaf tissue will tell you whether your plants are on course or falling behind. Peaceful Valley Farm Supply sells refractometers for $100, and you can find them online at groworganic.com.

Until about seven or eight years ago, using sugar as a plant supplement was a little-known trick more often employed by grandmothers on their houseplants than ganja growers on their herb. But now the hydroponics market is full of sugar (carbohydrate) supplements. In the beginning, there were several glucose-based products, such as Carbo Load, Carbo Max, Karbo Boost, etc. These are very cost-effective products as far as plant supplements go, but they’re not as cheap as raw glucose itself (usually sold as dextrose or corn sugar—it’s really the same thing), available at brewery-supply outlets and online for just over $1 per pound—less than $1 a pound if you buy in bulk. While glucose is readily available to plants as a form of supplemental carbohydrates, it’s just one form of a simple sugar and lacks the rich flavor found in other, darker kinds of sugar. It can also be difficult to dissolve: If you dump a large amount into water all at once, it has a tendency to form into a gelatinous wad of goo (of which even a small amount can wreak havoc in a hydro garden with small drippers or emitters). To avoid this, dissolve the amount necessary for your reservoir into a beaker of warm water first and pour off the dissolved liquid. Leave any undissolved materials at the bottom of the beaker and add more water until fully dissolved. The use of these products will indeed boost brix levels, but it doesn’t do much for flavor enhancement, which is what this article is all about.

My all-time-favorite source of supplemental sugar isn’t sold by a plant-nutrient company. It’s Sucanat—a form of dark raw sugar sold as a sweetener for foods in natural-food stores everywhere. But Sucanat is a great sweetener for your sinsemilla, too. Made by Wholesome Sweeteners, Sucanat is short for “Sugar Cane Natural,” a dried cane extract available for under $3 per pound. Sucanat is darker than most organic sugars and has a more molasses-like consistency to it because it hasn’t been separated or refined. It will increase the brix content in plants, but the darker sugar has more vitamins and minerals and a rich caramel aroma as well. Sucanat dissolves readily in hot water and doesn’t seem to turn into goo like dextrose does.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

OK, you pulled out the "Jade Kine" writing. Having read her stuff before, I'll still give a LOT more respect to the following scientific study by smiling Naomi:

....and show me which branch of your favorite "Kushberry Sweet" plant you're going to chop off and test the brix of when you're six weeks into flower.

If "Jade Kine" knew half of what Naomi does, she'd know why that molasses is in the funny organic stuff.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Mr Mike, the reason most other plants get pollinated even tho they don't have sticky THC to trap pollen is because most other plants contains both male and female parts on every flower, or in other cases on the same plant.
Also, most other plants on earth (excluding those that rely on spores such as fungi and ferns for example) have flowers that attract pollinaters such as bees by either color or sweetness (nectar). Marijuana does not have large, showy or sweet flowers. MJ pollen is wind-bourne.

Marijuana is one of a very few plants that have seperate male and female plants. It's vital for the female to have a way to "catch" pollen drifting on the wind rather than having the pollen brought to them by insects.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Commercial hemp, bred out to less than 1% THC, has no problem reproducing through wind-borne mechanism. And it reproduces as well if not better than the same dieoecious-stuctured, sometimes 15% marijuana.

Presented with this fact, I'm sure enlightenment can be acheived....

MYTH shattered
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Mr. Mike, hemp is not marijuana.
Close, but no cigar.

Hemp grows wild, almost always in large "stands", often close enough to touch.
Also, imo, a hemp plant grows taller and produces much more pollen than a marijuana plant.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Maybe hemp and cannabis have different chemical phenotypes, but I'm so sorry to let some fresh air in and tell you they are indeed the same species.

EXACTLY the same
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

*mr.mike* said:
Maybe hemp and cannabis have different chemical phenotypes, but I'm so sorry to let some fresh air in and tell you they are indeed the same species.

EXACTLY the same
:laughtwo: Not ! !
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Too many taxonomical studies have proven that Cannabis is indeed one species, and these were based on classical as well as molecular studies.

While Mahlberg and Hillig came to conclusions that they MAY be seperate species, if we choose to accept their findings, then we MUST accept that ruderalis is EXACTLY the same species as sativa. EXACTLY.

So, you could put that in your pipe and smoke it, ruderalis, that is, if you'll believe that they are separate species.

But widely accepted studies put them as the same species, and sativa, indica, and ruderalis are only varieties, not species.

One could go into the genetic differences, even within landraces, inbred and stable breeding lines, and commercially available hemp varieties, and find the same wide degree of variation that some claim to be the same variation that would separate a species - in the same variety.

But when you consider the question, and the definable answer to it: "what is a species", it is clear that Cannabis is a genus, but that sativa, indica and ruderalis are indeed varieties

You can't say there are different species, unless you say sativa and ruderalis are the same species. The evidence for the argument, and the logic used to come to the conclusion are inseperable.

Hemp is Cannabis sativa sp., and Marijuana is Cannabis sativa sp. Ruderalis is Cannabis sativa sp. These are all incontrovertible, inarguable facts. Molecular evidence is solid on these facts. With the best evidence of your argument, only indica can be different than sativa.

So you're down to wire. Which would you rather say (because evidence only points at one or the other) "Ruderalis is the same species as sativa", or "There is only one species of Cannabis which includes hemp"
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Just go and buy SUGAR DADDY from Technaflora, or SWEET....that is the shit puts weight on your bud and flavor like hell
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

I add 1 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice per gal/water every other time I water.

Before humans developed agriculture (estimates of when this was vary by thousands of years according to who's talking) there was no marijuana.
And you made a good analogy re: corn. There was no corn before humans learned agriculture either.
Scientists have found ancient corn in excavations in S. America. They were small, and resembled modern-day wheat.
But by people saving the biggest kernals for the next crop over and over for thousands of years, modern corn developed.
If the human race suddenly dissappeared, corn as most people know it would cease to exist. The kernals grow tightly encased in a husk where, without people to strip the husk, they would rot. Not all strains of corn. Some types on "Indian" corn for example split the husks themselves.
Cannibus we smoke came from the hemp plant. Over thousands and thousands of years of planting seeds from the most potent (highest THC) plants, what we now know as marijuana was developed.

Generally speaking, the marijuana we smoke does not grow wild.
Or it will grow untended just fine in a backyard or park in fertile soil with enough rain/ irrigation. A few weeks after rock concerts at Dodger and Anahiem Stadiums, the grounds crew would notice hundreds if not thousands of pot seedling sprouting, where people at the concert dropped them after cleaning thier weed. Regular mowing killed them.

I've hiked in the woods/country prob. over 1,000 miles in the last 25 or more years. I've only seen MJ growing wild once. And this was alongside a stream where literally thousands of seeds were dumped every year for many years (parking lot for the Renissance(sp) Faire). They were small stunted skinny things that MAYBE would have yielded a few grams per female plant.
Then why does hemp grow so easily, untended? Because marijuana has different requirements than hemp.
Marijuana requires richer soil, more water and more space between plants, factors obtainable once people started growing it, but not in the wild.

Back in my 1st few attemps at guerilla growing and seeing how easily seeds grew in my backyard, I thought all I had to do was plant seeds in the spring and come back months later and harvest massive amt's of weed. othing ever grew. Not until I amended existing soil and made regular watering trips did I end up harvesting bud.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

maybe thc has a dual purpose. Maybe its used to attract pollen but also protect the seeds. I don't really know much about the anatomy of marijuana but both of those seem pretty logical and believable.
 
Re: Sugar Water ?

Marijuana seeds do not pass through any animal I know of without being digested.
Some seeds will pass through, in fact some seeds will not germinate unless they pass through an animals gut; marijuana is not one of them.
 
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