Question
My gardener said that I could sprinkle sugar under my grapefruit tree to help make the fruit sweeter.  It is currently quite bitter.  Is this a fallacy or truth?  Thank you for your help.

Answer
Hi Laura;
I really have no idea, but as late as 11 or 12 years ago, I thought putting sugar on the lawn was rediculous.
For the last 10 or so years, thgat is all I have put on my lawn, unril last year, when I started using some of the other organic things.
Some varieties of grapefruit are just not sweet, but if it worked, what would it cost to find out? 4 or 5 bucks worth of sugar.
If you leave alone the chemicals, and go on an organic program, I know it will improve your soil, and good soil makes everything better.
The micro-organisms that work round the clock, imroving and enriching your soil is nourished by suagar, or dry molasses, or anything else that has a high sugar content.
You hear to put things like beer, bourbon etc on the lawn. It is because they have such a high sugar content.
I have used the plain table sugar and the dry molasses, and I like the results I get with sugar better.
They cost about the same per pound, and the dry molasses comes in 40 bags, as the smallest, and that is too heavy for me to work with. I but the sugar in about 10 pound bags, and can get it at the grocery store, and don't have to make a trip to the nursery.
It takes 10 pounds dry molases per 1000 sq.ft, and 4 to 5 pounds sugar per 1000 sq.ft, so it costs less too.
Suagr does absolutely nothing but nourish the micro-organisms that work on your soil. When the soil gets rich, weeds won't thrive, so they start dieing out as soon as they come up. No chemicals make a healthy enviornment for the lawn critters that eat all the harmful insects.
Toads love slugs and snails, and my lizards keep all the aphids off my roses etc.
No poisonous chemicals, and it is safe for my dogs and grandchildren on the grass, even while I am applyiong the organic things.
I know since I stopped using chemicals, and started the organic program, my fruit is larger/ I havbe dwarf fruit trees, peaches, crabapples, pears, apricots, apriums, plumcots, and apples and figs.
Chemical fertilizers DO NOT enrich the soil.
You apply them, and they wear out, and you have to reapply them.
They feed only the vegetation growing there, including the weeds.
I haven't used ANY chemicals for 10 years or so, and all I use besides the sugar is alfalfa meal, lava sand, and horticultural corn meal, and sometimes bakjing soda.
I disolve aking soda to sopray the roses and repe myrtles for powdery mildew and black spot fungus, and the hort. corn meal for fungus on the lawn, which I haven't had in about 8 years. A healthy soil does not have the fungii either.
You can't go partially organic though. Any chemicals you use,( and chemical fertilizers are maybe even worse than the weed killers and insecticides,) will kill the beneficial microbes and the lawn critters, so you have o go all organic or all chemical.
Organic gives better results, in a weed free, thick, lush lawn, no harmful insects, less than 1/4th the work, and even a larger percentage less money spoent.
If you would like a copy of my organic program, write me, I would be glad to give you a copy.
I would try the sugar on at least one tree and see. You never can tell.
Charlotte