So what exactly is Brix?
Well, Brix is often referred to as the “sugar” or sucrose content of a plant or the product of it, but this is a very simplistic and incomplete view of Brix. Brix actually refers to the Total Soluble Solids (TSS) in the product juice or plant sap. Total soluble solids refer not only to sucrose (sugar) but also to fructose, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, hormones, and other solids found in the plant, fruit, or vegetable.
The higher the TSS or Brix value, the healthier and richer in nutrients/minerals the plant will be. Therefore, as far as agriculture and gardening are concerned, high Brix plant products will also be high Brix and will offer the most nutritional and “energy” value to whoever eats those products. Therefore, animals and humans will receive the greatest health benefit from fruits and vegetables with the highest Brix values (and from meat from animals that have eaten grasses with the highest Brix value).
How does a high Brix help me with my lawn?
Why should you care about Brix values, other than this information can be helpful in making decisions about your eating habits? Why does this have any relevance to your organic lawn care practices? Well, bear with me for a moment longer, and I think you’ll see how this relates to insect control in your lawn and landscaping.
You see, while God may not be “scoring” the nutritional value of plants and produce with a Brix value, He certainly understands that we will receive the most health benefit from plants and produce that contain the highest concentration of nutrients. After all, that IS the way He designed it. And, as a result, since He has our best interests in mind, He would want us to eat those plants and produce with the highest Brix value and not those of questionable nutritional value (Low Brix). Consequently, he incorporated an interesting mechanism into this whole process: insect infestation.
Now, I’m going to digress briefly to talk about the digestive system of an insect, but we’ll get back to our main discussion VERY quickly. You see, to properly digest sugar, one must have a liver. God did not design most insects with livers, and while there may be other reasons why he chose to leave this little element out of the anatomy of most insects, one that is particularly useful to humans is that a liver is needed. . to digest sugar.
So if an insect, which has no liver, ingests sugar, that sugar will eventually turn into alcohol and kill the insect. Interestingly, insects “know” this, and plants with a high Brix value (and, as a result, a high sugar content) will emit different patterns of UV light and electrical charges that tell insects to stay away.
This SHOULD be helpful to us because, IF we were paying attention, the presence of an insect infestation would be a clear indication that eating that particular plant (or its products) would have minimal nutritional value. Therefore, simple self-preservation would have us either fortify that plant with what it lacks (good nutrition) or look elsewhere for plants that are NOT infested with insects (high Brix) and products that meet our nutritional needs.
Unfortunately, it has become the norm to ignore those warning signs and simply kill all the bugs, either with some toxic chemical or some natural alternative. Of course, of those two options, the natural insecticide is certainly the better option, but it still doesn’t address the core problem of this situation. The bugs are there for a reason. The plant is not healthy. Make the plant healthy and the sugar content of the plant will increase, the insects will switch to a more attractive food source and we will have a nutritious and tasty little snack to munch on (high Brix fruits and vegetables actually DO have much better flavor than those with a lower Brix value).
Then again you might ask (possibly in a slightly irritated tone at this point), “Why the hell do I care about insect eating habits and the nutritional value of products when I’m reading this article to help me take care of my lawn?”
I’m glad you asked because it’s all about to become clear (assuming you haven’t figured it out yet).
Grass also has a Brix value
As I mentioned earlier, we can measure the Brix value of ANY plant and it gives us the same information no matter which plant it is. The higher the Brix value, the healthier the plant. The higher the Brix value, the higher the sugar content. So, the higher your lawn’s Brix value, the more likely it is that insects won’t feast on your blue-ribbon lawn (or, if they do, they’ll die trying).
In fact, a Brix value of 12 or more is all that is needed to almost completely eliminate insect infestation from any plant, including grass. The higher the better. Brix values for many plants can actually reach values well above 20 or 30. Some suggest that REALLY good nutrition of a plant can actually raise Brix values into the hundreds, although most people would consider this not to be realistic.
Either way, most grasses and plants have such a low Brix value (typically no more than 6 or 8, and often much lower) that insects feed on them throughout the day (not to mention, if they are edible plants, their nutritional value to all of us is almost zero). Raising the Brix of a plant is actually quite simple. Provide good nutrition, including a balanced diet of macro and micronutrients and trace elements.
How do you do that? Well, organic lawn care and gardening is a great start, as truly natural organic fertilizers and soil amendments will provide much better nutrition to any plant than chemical fertilizers. Some fertilizers will raise Brix values more effectively than others. For example, seaweed fertilizers are probably the most effective means of improving any plant’s overall nutrition (and therefore Brix value) because most seaweed fertilizers are made from seaweed grown in VERY cold water, virtually free of toxins and rich in nutrients, just like the North Atlantic.
Since seaweed is a plant unto itself, the macro and micronutrients it provides are fully balanced and readily available to a plant. Therefore, adding seaweed to any fertilization program is probably the easiest way to increase the Brix value of that plant, which includes grass. Therefore, adding regular doses of seaweed to your lawn care and landscaping fertilization program will increase the Brix of your lawn and plants. The higher the Brix value, the less insect problems you will have.
Consequently, I recommend that if you have any kind of insect problem, it is a FACT that your lawn (or flower or tree or shrub or garden) is receiving very poor nutrition and therefore very unhealthy, even if he doesn’t necessarily LOOK ill at this particular moment. Improve the nutrition the plant receives and the insects will move elsewhere. I promise.
