I've been using alfalfa for years and reading this forum for years and I've never heard of triacontanol. I have read on occasion that there was a growth stimulator in alfalfa, but I would never use a material simply for that reason. The reason I use alfalfa (or corn meal, or corn gluten meal, or wheat flour, or coffee grounds, or soybean meal, or cottonseed meal) is that it feeds protein to the soil microbes. If you want to feed protein to your soil microbes indoors, I dilute milk in water and water with that. If you water a pure peat mix with milky water for three weeks, the soil will completely change as the soil fungi take off. The soil will even smell different (after the slightly sour milk smell dissipates). It will smell incredibly fresh and clean. I tried dusting the soil with coffee grounds to get the protein from them, but the milk worked 1000% better.

The alfalfa pellets sold here don't have molasses, it's simply shredded leaves, highly compressed. At $2/bale I mean right off the field when they're baling. You get all the stems too, not just leaves. I don't see why your tea would be any different...if it has stems likely just need a bigger brew bin.

teka2rjleffel, I'm not sure how to answer that. My tea is just part of my feeding/soil improvement program and my roses are putting out new growth pretty constantly. I can't say I see any real spurt of growth after using the tea--I do have a good number of basals on most roses, though. I do the tea once a month. Mid-month I use Miracle Gro alone and Rosetone or Hollytone in the Spring and Summer (it's on tonight's list of things to do), and compost once a year. I don't have enough compost (or manure when I have the time and energy to go get it) to put it around every rose every year, so I rotate. I've experimented this year with adding 10-10-10 in-between on roses I think I might show and those in pots, too--so something pretty much every week on those roses. One reason I feed so heavily is because all of my roses are in raised beds filled with bagged topsoil/composted manure or pots--due to my vole problem, so I feel they need the extra fertilizer. Not sure this helped, Barbara

Gezz, nothing like getting to something right away (alittle sarcasm here). I FINIALLY put out my Alfalfa meal today. My bag did get me around the front yard and the backyard and the drioveway side yard. All the front yard daylilies still need to be done. I should have done this yesterday as it rained heavily last night but the way its been going, I doubt that I will have to wait long for the rain to wash the meal in. I liked working with the meal better than the pelletts as it was really easy to spread a layer of it thru the entire daylily beds. You can easily see what you have already done. I made it the first thing on todays gardening chores to make sure it did get done. I hope I can find another bag. Plus I never did my roses either.