Reusing soil

[baldmountain]

I'm getting tired of buying bags of Happy Frog and tossing the finished soil in my vegetable garden after harvesting the plants. I was wondering how people reuse soil after a grow finishes. I use 3 gallon pots so the soil is usually pretty much a root ball. Is it enough to break up the root ball into a large rubbermaid container and mix in a bag of worm castings and let it sit a while?

 

[treefarmercharlie]

I'm getting tired of buying bags of Happy Frog and tossing the finished soil in my vegetable garden after harvesting the plants. I was wondering how people reuse soil after a grow finishes. I use 3 gallon pots so the soil is usually pretty much a root ball. Is it enough to break up the root ball into a large rubbermaid container and mix in a bag of worm castings and let it sit a while?

I keep close to double the amount of soil I need so I can rotate it each grow. When I harvest I break up the root ball, remove the thicker roots and leave the thin ones in, then I moisten it to right around field capacity, and then it gets amended and covered in a tote to sit through the next grow cycle.

 

[H.A.F.]

@baldmountain I think a key to reusing it effectively is for it to be alive - with or without the plants in it. From microbes and fungi to worms and predator mites. The thing about soil is that stuff wants to live in it. if you try and keep it sterile like coco you'll go nuts. If you have Happy Frog and you have no good bugs - the fungus gnats find a home. And they thrive in our plants environment, and then you're not a gardener so much as an insect manager.

All of this can come from a worm bin. If there are worms and stuff in the pots working the soil it's even better, but just adding fresh worm castings will get you there eventually. The castings will have worm eggs sack thing. each egg has a few worms in it. If you add no grown worms to a pot, but add fresh castings, by the end you'll have some little 1-2" worms and maybe larger.

You will not see 'rootbound' issues as quickly, and if you just keep a pot moist and the cover crop or mulch moist after harvest you can let them keep working the soil for a bit before dumping and reammending it. Your rootball after 2-3 weeks is mainly the larger roots. All the fine stuff rots and is processed by the life in the pot by then.

 

[H.A.F.]

As far as reammending, so far I have been using Craft Blend and insect frass from buildasoil, and some guano from Down to Earth. I have some other specific minerals from Down to Earth and some micronutes from buildasoil, but I don't try and guestimate how much of those to add to the soil. I run all of that stuff through the worm bin mixed in the bedding.

I eventually want to get the specific things I want and make my own Craft Blend (mainly without kelp and alfalfa) but I have enough Craft Blend to last for another year at least.

You can go down one rabbit hole and buy all kinds of well-sourced organic goodies to add to your soil before and during a grow, and another hole where you can grow, ferment, and compost all kinds of stuff. Mainly it depends on where time has to go and what you enjoy besides smoking the end product.

 

[baldmountain]

You can go down one rabbit hole and buy all kinds of well-sourced organic goodies to add to your soil before and during a grow, and another hole where you can grow, ferment, and compost all kinds of stuff. Mainly it depends on where time has to go and what you enjoy besides smoking the end product.

I **REALLY** don't want to go down rabbit holes. I'm kinda lazy and I'm looking for a relatively simple solution. I agree about keeping the soil alive. I add some nematodes to my plants once in a while when I am watering and I let any spiders (not spider mites) that happen to move into my grow tent. (as long as they don't start a web on my plants.

 

[H.A.F.]

I **REALLY** don't want to go down rabbit holes. I'm kinda lazy and I'm looking for a relatively simple solution. I agree about keeping the soil alive. I add some nematodes to my plants once in a while when I am watering and I let any spiders (not spider mites) that happen to move into my grow tent. (as long as they don't start a web on my plants.

If you load your soil with bottled nutrients during the grow, then "flush" at the end, you are putting stuff in the soil that is for the plants - not the soil. You are cooking a recipe, and any recipe works best when starting from a clean slate. Re-using soil not knowing what is left from last grow and how it may effect next grow is the issue. I don't flush. I don't water to run-off even.

You can ammend soil to the point that it's water only but I think that's pushing it and you go back to being a cook and not a gardener. Having a huge pot for living soil is one way around that, adding stuff during the grow is the other. I just don't add stuff from bottles. Raw barley can be sprouted for a tea, or malted and ground up and used to top dress, and you can aither buy that barley or grow it from the sprouting seeds and eventually be self sustainable with the barley.

That's what I meant by rabbit hole. You can buy a bottle of enzymes, a sack of barley at the grocery store, or some specifically grown organic 2-row barley from buildasoil that was grown without bad stuff in the soil or sprayed on. Rabbit holes that can go deep, but you can just scratch the surface and do well.

You may have noticed that I'm a $0.02 kind of dude. That was my 2 cents no preaching. But if you have questions feel free.

 

[wierdly]

Throwing away soil lead me down the hole.

 

[H.A.F.]

Throwing away soil lead me down the hole.

Before I learned... lets just say theres a good bit of perlite in my outdoor veggie garden

 

[baldmountain]

I usually add a couple tablespoons of General Hydroponics FloraGrow to 5 gallons of water. It's not enough to feed the plant but the buffer in the FloraGrow fixes ph in tap water so it is in a reasonable range for the plants. It's probably not needed but I believe in having ph in a good range and our tap water ranges from 5.6 to 8.2 or so depending on season. Otherwise the plants get whatever is in the soil.

 

[wierdly]

i am working on a 2x 4 no til Heugle culture for my tent. Mixing a batch of "coots Mix". I had to put down the bottleNow I only need a moisture meter the plants keep the ph however they need it. I saw these guys on you tube. If Build the soil guy was the Karate Kid this guy would be Johnny Larwence, it would be a goo Tae Kwon Do match.

 

[H.A.F.]

I usually add a couple tablespoons of General Hydroponics FloraGrow to 5 gallons of water.

I do the same every watering, not a lot of goodies but enough to make the pH settle on something before hitting the pot. But I use fermented stuff, or LAB, or any of a number of organic things. I just rotate through the lot, adding one thing here, one thing next watering, but never plain water.

 

[H.A.F.]

Oh, I use ~4ml/gl of any of the homemade liquid stuff so it's almost a tsp.

 

[crimsonecho]

in my 20gal pots i cut the rootball out with scalpel at about 10cm wide square, remove mulch, topdress with ewc bat guano and wheat bran, transplant the new clone, mulch and water.

with 8-10l pots i dump them out, take the bigger rootball out, mix ewc, bat guano and wheat bran, mix it nicely and fill the pots again. transplant and water.

i use coco base and not peat though with peat the buffer will eventually wear out and it may become acidic so you should test the peat to see if you need to buffer with lime.

 

[Vee]

I'm getting tired of buying bags of Happy Frog and tossing the finished soil in my vegetable garden after harvesting the plants. I was wondering how people reuse soil after a grow finishes. I use 3 gallon pots so the soil is usually pretty much a root ball. Is it enough to break up the root ball into a large rubbermaid container and mix in a bag of worm castings and let it sit a while?

I always advize guys wanting to get into organics is to buy in some fox farm ocean forest(expensive) add 25% perlite or clean river sand, once the grow is done add another small bag of FFOF to add back the nutes. or use your own. this technique can go for decades ..lol
For me I always say buy locally, as the bugs would be almost the same bugs in your area, for that I get mine of the hippies down at the river, they make it for local tomato farmers

 

[treefarmercharlie]

I always advize guys wanting to get into organics is to buy in some fox farm ocean forest(expensive) add 25% perlite or clean river sand, once the grow is done add another small bag of FFOF to add back the nutes. or use your own. this technique can go for decades ..lol
For me I always say buy locally, as the bugs would be almost the same bugs in your area, for that I get mine of the hippies down at the river, they make it for local tomato farmers

FFOF is hit or miss where I live. I stopped buying it years ago because I got batches that had loads of bark and sticks it in. The two bagged soils that I really like are Nectar for the Gods #4 and Elevation Organics Basecamp but I haven't seen Elevation Organics Basecamp locally in awhile.

 

[treefarmercharlie]

BTW, I just uncovered the tote of soil I've had sitting for about 4 months in my grow room. When I pulled the plastic off it had some mycelium on the top. I fluffed the top with my fingers and look at how nice it looks. It's still nice and moist and the thin roots that I left in it have broken down. After I took this photo I moved it into another tote and mixed worm castings into it as I transferred it into the other tote.

 

[Mudballs]

3 gal afterbirth pile unceremoniously left to the elements for indeterminate timeframe.

Grab your ammending formula ratio based amounts. Mine is an unscientific 18ish gal.

Throw in large container for mixing, remove any sticks as you run accross them.

Toss your ingredients in per the formula and do a nice photogenic setup like this to diss ur online haters.

Then mix it all together and bag...

Or use immediately, without cooking (lol dont get me started) to grow sweet shit like this that makes ur online haters hate you even more.

 

[baldmountain]

3 gal afterbirth pile unceremoniously left to the elements for indeterminate timeframe.
...

Yeah, this is pretty much what I am looking to do. Although currently the 3 gall afterbirth pile is going into a big heavy plastic trash can with some water to keep it moist and a bunch of worm castings. The part I'm missing is: "your ammending formula"

 

[Mudballs]

It comes in time ..what you have easily available+what ur willing to extend to get ur hands on+shipping=your formula...huge annoyance to figure out at first but then it's a gravity assisted ride after that. Im convinced those 2 tsp of humic acid helps in reammending too.