I am new to organic gardening. Before I learned of this site, I purchased and applied Texas Tee fertilizer earlier this year (which I now understand from this site is a good brand of fertilizer).

In reading the material here, it appears that dry molasses is recommended sometimes and sometimes something like Texas Tee is recommended.

How do I decide which to use to fertilize my St. Augustine lawn?

Thanks

I've used Texas Tee on my lawn for years and love it. There is molasses in the Tee mix already.

Thanks for the reply. But is there a reason or occasion where you would use solely the molasses?

Molasses provides food for microorganisms and is a source of carbon, sulfur, and potash. It is a good, quick source of energy for the soil life and microbes in a compost pile, and will chase fire ants away. It is a carbon source and feeds beneficial microbes creating greater nature fertility. By itself, on the lawn, it's great but I love the other things that are added to the Tx Tee to really give my lawn a jump start. You can use molasses by itself in other applications such as a veg or flower bed, or as a foliar feed.

There is a big difference in the two products. Texas Tee has protein in it. Molasses has none. Protein is ultimately what provides nitrogen to the plants. The nitrogen molecules in protein are decomposed by soil microbes and those microbes are decomposed by other microbes until eventually some of the species are decomposed into plant food with nitrogen in it. Molasses plays a role in providing energy to the microbes, just like it plays a role in providing energy to mammals. The soil microbes can use both protein and energy. Usually the energy is provided by the grass itself (photosynthesis and sugar out through the roots).