Spraying Maple Syrup on Garden Plants: Useful Hack or Harmful?

Maple syrup has garden benefits that we may find surprising. However, I can’t recommend treating your plants like I do a Saturday morning pancake, absolutely bathing in the stuff. Its application is more about feeding soil and enhancing nutrition in tandem with other beneficial organics.

Diluted maple syrup added to soil and exposed to moisture may promote beneficial fungi and microorganisms for increased soil nutrition. These essential soil processors feed on the syrup’s sugary carbohydrates. The increasing microbial activity means the efficient decomposition of organic matter and conversion to a form plants uptake as nutrients.

Spraying pure maple syrup on plants may have negative impacts, like drawing insects and other pests and inhibiting natural processes. However, a formulated mixture—best applied as enrichment with water and other ingredients like compost or earthworm castings—can foster beneficial bacteria. This creates a solid foundation for healthy plants with disease-resistant vigor.

The Role of Sugars

Long used for their carbohydrates, plant sugars fertilize and enrich soils. From cranberry bogs to beet farms, the non-commercial-grade yields have uses as fertilizers. Fermented beet juice makes a nutritious tree fertilizer while decomposing cranberries offer a rich soil amendment.

Molasses is widely used. It is derived from processing sugar cane and adding trace minerals and sugary carbohydrates. It contains calcium and magnesium, which are essential for healthy growth.

The premise is that spraying maple syrup on garden plants is a nutrient-builder by providing minerals and sugars for beneficial bacteria. To achieve its benefits, incorporate this ingredient into a compost tea for foliar and root feeding.

Additional benefits of plant saps, or saponins, are surfactant qualities. Surfactants are sticky, weighty carriers that help other substances adhere to a surface. Research shows that plant saponins have a role in place of artificial, synthetic surfactants. Maple trees may have surfactant saponins, but for now, we’ll explore plant benefits.

Sugary Compost Tea

Compost tea is the beverage of choice for healthy plants, applied as a foliar spray and at the soil level. Compost itself creates the most concentrated nutrition for plants, provides organic matter for microbes, and can be spread over a wide area. For added benefit, tea offers fast absorption and holds four times as many microbes.

You can buy concentrated teas and equipment or easily create your own. Aerated systems keep the liquid fresh (and not smelly!) and expedite the brew.

There are ways to target the value of the tea to your specific garden areas. A basic compost tea is all-purpose. Adding maple syrup or molasses, fruit juice, or fish emulsion promotes higher beneficial bacteria levels utilized by annual plants. Perennials, shrubs, and teas do best with high fungal content by adding kelp and some fruit pulps.

Benefits

With aerated tea, you’ll activate a troop of microbes housed in the living brew and later in the soil. These require organic matter to feed on, so be sure to use leaf mold, mulch, or compost as topdressing in the beds to decompose over time and support microorganism populations.

As a soil drench or foliar spray, compost teas with good bacteria may outcompete other pathogens for improved disease resistance. Stronger growth, too, boosts resistance.

How to Brew

Maple Syrup Recipe

The mixture should have a sweet, earthy smell with a rich coffee color and a frothy top. The liquid can get foamy; a capful of vegetable oil (not olive or canola, which have antimicrobials) helps reduce the froth.

To use the tea on fruits and vegetables, avoid spraying directly on the edible parts. Clean the bucket and equipment after each use so it’s sterile for the next round.

How to Apply

In spring and fall, use teas as a soil drench. Annuals benefit from multiple “watering” sessions sin their growing cycle. 

Use diluted tea as a foliar spray as plants put on new growth and set buds. To make the spray, use four cups of tea per gallon of water that has been left outside for 24 hours to dechlorinate. Spray leaves early in the day to avoid intense heat and sun.

To activate microbes in the compost pile, add some tea. The living organisms have plenty to feed on as they get to work decomposing the biomass. Some gardeners also add molasses with water to the pile.