Watering and medium questions

[ridefas78]

newbie here, i live in a area where i have town water and have too much chlorine to use tap water. what i do then is i use the runoff water through my gutter for rain water. Haven't had any problems with anything as of yet but this should be a good water source right? second question is about reusing growing medium. i'm currently growing in coco coir and the bags needed per grow can get expensive. so is there any way to reuse after harvest?

 

[Emilya Green]

newbie here, i live in a area where i have town water and have too much chlorine to use tap water. what i do then is i use the runoff water through my gutter for rain water. Haven't had any problems with anything as of yet but this should be a good water source right? second question is about reusing growing medium. i'm currently growing in coco coir and the bags needed per grow can get expensive. so is there any way to reuse after harvest?

Hi @ridefas78 and welcome to the forum!

I think you can use coco a couple of times anyway, but if you are looking for a truly economical and stealthy way to grow without all the bags in and out of the house, is using a minerally enriched organic soil. This truly can be used over and over again, and when it gets light on nutrients it can simply be amended. I have been using the same soil in grow after grow for at least the last 7 years, and it still has plenty of life left in it.

As far as chlorine goes, a little bit of it is actually needed by our plants. Many soil grows, where tracking the TDS in your water is not an issue and the plants are being fed from a bottle, tap water is perfectly acceptable to use. Chlorine does not hurt a thing and it takes swimming pool concentrations of it to totally kill the microbes and fungi in our soil anyway; they are pretty tough critters. It is good to know however that a single vitamin c tab in a bathtub filled with water will instantly neutralize and drop to the bottom as sediment, any chlorine product in all that water. Bottle it up or store it in buckets, but it is ready to go as soon as you do this, and the added benefit is that all the other minerals that come in your tap water for taste, are good for the plants.

 

[TurboBucket]

newbie here, i live in a area where i have town water and have too much chlorine to use tap water. what i do then is i use the runoff water through my gutter for rain water. Haven't had any problems with anything as of yet but this should be a good water source right? second question is about reusing growing medium. i'm currently growing in coco coir and the bags needed per grow can get expensive. so is there any way to reuse after harvest?

Supposedly according to Canna after the third run the Coco starts to break down, you can use it for up to 7 x 16 week cycles before it needs to be replaced. Again just repeating what I've read. I buy new bricks every run. It's like 1$ a gallon here so $30 for 30+ ounces of bud is well worth it.
You can treat the Coco with an enzyme solution like z7, slf100, dynazyme etc.. and let it set for a month or two. The enzymes will help break down the root mass. Keep it protected from bugs or you'll end up with more problems than it's worth.

Soil is the way to go for reusable medium, it's got a whole microsystem inside it already to help keep your plants in tip top shape.

 

[ridefas78]

Hi @ridefas78 and welcome to the forum!

I think you can use coco a couple of times anyway, but if you are looking for a truly economical and stealthy way to grow without all the bags in and out of the house, is using a minerally enriched organic soil. This truly can be used over and over again, and when it gets light on nutrients it can simply be amended. I have been using the same soil in grow after grow for at least the last 7 years, and it still has plenty of life left in it.

As far as chlorine goes, a little bit of it is actually needed by our plants. Many soil grows, where tracking the TDS in your water is not an issue and the plants are being fed from a bottle, tap water is perfectly acceptable to use. Chlorine does not hurt a thing and it takes swimming pool concentrations of it to totally kill the microbes and fungi in our soil anyway; they are pretty tough critters. It is good to know however that a single vitamin c tab in a bathtub filled with water will instantly neutralize and drop to the bottom as sediment, any chlorine product in all that water. Bottle it up or store it in buckets, but it is ready to go as soon as you do this, and the added benefit is that all the other minerals that come in your tap water for taste, are good for the plants.

everything i've read says that it's bad and if you do use tap to irrigate the water for 24hrs. if what you say with them being able to take that then using the water i collect from water runoff on my roof should be more than sufficient

 

[ridefas78]

Supposedly according to Canna after the third run the Coco starts to break down, you can use it for up to 7 x 16 week cycles before it needs to be replaced. Again just repeating what I've read. I buy new bricks every run. It's like 1$ a gallon here so $30 for 30+ ounces of bud is well worth it.
You can treat the Coco with an enzyme solution like z7, slf100, dynazyme etc.. and let it set for a month or two. The enzymes will help break down the root mass. Keep it protected from bugs or you'll end up with more problems than it's worth.

Soil is the way to go for reusable medium, it's got a whole microsystem inside it already to help keep your plants in tip top shape.

yeah the root thing is what i feared most. i could shake off alot over a tarp by holding it at the base but obviously some dried up roots will make their way in.

 

[Emilya Green]

everything i've read says that it's bad and if you do use tap to irrigate the water for 24hrs. if what you say with them being able to take that then using the water i collect from water runoff on my roof should be more than sufficient

Yes, unless your shingles provide a harmful runoff, yes, rainwater is good. You should not believe even half of what you read on the internet. Trust no one, verify what you can. By the way, in all your reading you must not have encountered chloramine, which is what most water companies now use to chlorinate their water, because it can not evaporate. Leaving it sitting out for a week will not evaporate the chlorine from your tap water if this is what they used. Everything out there available to read must have left that out.

 

[ridefas78]

Ahh yeah I’m sorry that’s what I was meaning when I said chlorine I’m sorry. I’ve been using the water so far since germination and so far so good