I'mOne
Well-Known Member
Anyone have any tip or guidelines on how to reuse soil? When can I? When not to? How to begin?etc?
Recycling soil
- Thread starter I'mOne
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Following this...
You can for sure re-use organic soil.
I use the same soil over and over again been doing it for ever.
You will likely need to amend your used soil for the next round.
A soil test works wonders on how to figure out what is needed.
I use the same soil over and over again been doing it for ever.
You will likely need to amend your used soil for the next round.
A soil test works wonders on how to figure out what is needed.
Deketx
Well-Known Member
Based on the cost of the soil In definitely interested in re-using my soil. Any particular brand you have used that you would recommend?
Coots mix is what i use
SommerVirelli
Well-Known Member
I rotate my soil. When I’m finished with a grow the soil gets dumped into a black tote. I add granular organic fertilizer, as well as mycorrhizae and Biochar. Water is added to field capacity. It gets mixed up and the lid slapped on. It remains undisturbed to “cook” while another grow is taking place. The mycos colonize the soil, breaking up organic matter such as old leaves and even dead roots, preparing it for the next grow. You’ll know it’s good when you take off the lid before use and see fuzzy mycorrhizae growing on the surface of the soil. You now have soil with an active living colony of microorganisms ready for your girls. I’ve been doing this with the same soil for awhile. I only replenish with new soil when levels run low. It happens when taking the root balls of chopped plants out so it’s expected. Hope this helps!
@SommerVirelli Beautiful.
I do a version of what you do. Sometimes I end up with excess soil and just put it in a tote to use up later.
I sometimes just take a pot out of rotation with the root ball in the pot and let it sit. 2-3 weeks later the roots are mostly all composted.
I think the root ball decomp builds up the soil for the next round.
I do a version of what you do. Sometimes I end up with excess soil and just put it in a tote to use up later.
I sometimes just take a pot out of rotation with the root ball in the pot and let it sit. 2-3 weeks later the roots are mostly all composted.
I think the root ball decomp builds up the soil for the next round.
SommerVirelli
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. Gotta love decomposition!
I mix up soil based on Coot's recipe by the bucket-full. I mix about 10 gallons at a time in a wheelbarrow and then store in large tubs I bought from a local big-box home improvement store. Right now I have about 50 gallons worth in various pots with plants and about 25-30 gallons in large buckets and pots just resting and waiting their turn. I end up doing the same sort of thing since the soil is in rotation all the time. Near as I can figure some of my soil mix, approx. 1/3 of it, is now 2 years old and the peat moss that was put in back in 2017 is pretty much decomposed and no longer peat moss.
What caught my eye in your msg was the adding of more Biochar during your recharging. What I have read more than once is that Biochar does not decompose as fast as most of us would think. The Biochar added to the soil in the Amazon/South America centuries ago is still there. That is how they discovered it years ago when people could still see the outlines of the canals and the fields alongside the canals even centuries after the people had left. Researchers found the Biochar in the soil and back tracked to figure out how it got there.
To be sure that I was remembering right about decomposition of Biochar I did a search. (I used the key words of: does biochar decompose) Scientists have started to come to the conclusion that it can take centuries, up to 4,000 years, for the charcoal to decompose back to basic organic carbons like the way leaves, roots, stems and other plant parts of in a matter of years, sometimes weeks.
Now you have me thinking that I might add some more biochar to the soil mix I have that is already resting just to use it up. I have bags of basic char that has not been charged yet and several buckets of charged Biochar that is just being stored.
Thank you for your comments and thoughts on rotating soils. I just spent some quality time researching more on Biochar, especially how long it remains in the soil, which is something I had wanted to do for several months and kept putting off for one reason or another.
Have a great day.
SommerVirelli
Well-Known Member
Thanks SmokingWings! That info on Biochar is definitely new to me. Guess I can hold off adding until enough volume of soil and castings is added to thin it out lol.
If you have done the search using the words I used somewhere in the first 4-5 links will be a short article on a research project of about 8 1/2 years on whether biochar will decompose and how fast it decomposes. Very interesting article even if it is very short.
Biochar is a great place for micro-organisms to live. It will also aerate the soil due to the high surface area.
I think in the Coots mix some folks have amended like 10% of the mix with biochar.
Another thing with bio-char - you can make your own with hardwood or hardwood coal they use for grilling. The ashes (Potash) and the leftover unfinished coal can be added to your compost bin (charge it) or just make a pile on the ground and let it sit. When you think about it just add a scoop into you extra bin of soil and mix.
That said - you cannot use bio-char that hasn't been charged. It can be a nutrient sink and starve your first round of plants. So be aware of that.
Charging is easy - add to compost bin and use the compost as an amendment or make a compost tea and add the fresh un-charged biochar to the tea and let it sit or aerate over night (or both). Charged and ready.
I think in the Coots mix some folks have amended like 10% of the mix with biochar.
Another thing with bio-char - you can make your own with hardwood or hardwood coal they use for grilling. The ashes (Potash) and the leftover unfinished coal can be added to your compost bin (charge it) or just make a pile on the ground and let it sit. When you think about it just add a scoop into you extra bin of soil and mix.
That said - you cannot use bio-char that hasn't been charged. It can be a nutrient sink and starve your first round of plants. So be aware of that.
Charging is easy - add to compost bin and use the compost as an amendment or make a compost tea and add the fresh un-charged biochar to the tea and let it sit or aerate over night (or both). Charged and ready.
Right. I have bought already charged biochar and mixed that in when making up my soil mix.
Earlier this year the local hydro & grow store that I like going to had several bags of plain char which was just that, plain & not charged. Not only were they able to give me their recommended ratio of char to compost to start charging it but they also wrote down the key words to find the articles and videos that they like to reference on biochar and how to use it.
One of their recommendations was to use one part char to 10 parts compost and let sit for several weeks. The other was to then mix into my soil at a rate of 1 part charged biochar to 10 parts soil mixture. Looking at Coot's recipe that is pretty much what he said with the base for his mix:
To get 10 cubic feet of mix use
3 cubic feet of quality peat moss
3 cubic feet of quality compost
3 cubic feet of perlite or pumice
1 cubic foot of charged bio-char
Looks close enough to 10% of the base mix to me.
Now I have more than enough charged up biochar for the weed grow but I can experiment with it in the vegetable and flower gardens in the yard.
Bio-char charges up pretty quickly (overnight) in a nutrient tea.
You can add a few cups of compost to your tea and overnight its charged.
Your hydro buddies are onto something.
When not charged it soaks up or absorbs nutrients in the soil.
Sequestering is what that is.
The Bio-char will release those nutrients later. It just takes a few months. Not that great in a container with an annual plant in there.
I use hardwood charcoal to cook out with or smoke with it so I always have a little pile beside our garden. It gets naturally charged sitting on the ground. It's good that way since the ashes (potash) are there too and they are filled with nutrients the char can adsorb.
You can add a few cups of compost to your tea and overnight its charged.
Your hydro buddies are onto something.
When not charged it soaks up or absorbs nutrients in the soil.
Sequestering is what that is.
The Bio-char will release those nutrients later. It just takes a few months. Not that great in a container with an annual plant in there.
I use hardwood charcoal to cook out with or smoke with it so I always have a little pile beside our garden. It gets naturally charged sitting on the ground. It's good that way since the ashes (potash) are there too and they are filled with nutrients the char can adsorb.
Deketx
Well-Known Member
Good read so far , thanks.
This was my set-up for mixing the raw or uncharged char. The pail is 10 quarts. After filling it up from the bucket I then added a quart of char and sat down in a lawn chair and started mixing with the hand trowel.
Did this a couple of times so I ended up filling a 5 gallon bucket. Then I put a cover over the 5 gallon bucket so I could have some control over the amount of water in it. I did not want it getting soaking wet if it rained.
A photo I took last spring when I started working on my own charged up biochar.
Plans are to do it again very early next spring and use up the rest of the raw char. I will be overloaded with charged biochar in no time but I have plans.
I already know which garden bed I will be working on next year. If all goes well that part of the garden will be filled with flowering annuals and people walking by will instinctively look at all the color and not casually look around my back yard and possibly see something growing that we do not want them to see.
Did this a couple of times so I ended up filling a 5 gallon bucket. Then I put a cover over the 5 gallon bucket so I could have some control over the amount of water in it. I did not want it getting soaking wet if it rained.
A photo I took last spring when I started working on my own charged up biochar.
Plans are to do it again very early next spring and use up the rest of the raw char. I will be overloaded with charged biochar in no time but I have plans.
I already know which garden bed I will be working on next year. If all goes well that part of the garden will be filled with flowering annuals and people walking by will instinctively look at all the color and not casually look around my back yard and possibly see something growing that we do not want them to see.
They will be warning you about the skunk in the neighborhood or a gas leak.
Havocsm1
Well-Known Member
I'm pretty new, about 1yr experience growing. So my plan may have faults, its pretty simple too. Keep all my old soil in a specific area, compost it until I need it. Put some in my tea bags, Brew some tea with the rest of it. That way I know I'm getting the most out of my soil and if you get good tea bags hardly any of the soil drains out of the bag. The tea is an actual tea color with nothing to very little floating. I use FFof .
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I'mOne
Well-Known Member
Ok I transferred some dancehall to new pots, they were in small containers and we're a bout a month old. They had a great rootball. I considered just going to a gallon a or gallon and half but didn't have good containers. On to my kitty litter buckets with holes dremeled in the bottom lip I am using happy frog and was going to run out. I got some of my old soil that has been sitting outsiders in the rain for two or three months. I added about a quarter new peat and a quarter play sand. So my resulting mix was about half new happy frog, one quarter used soil and 1/8ths sand and 1/8ths fresh peat.
Unfortunately I'm not very organized. I had some ph strips and lost them ....will order some on Amazon. I have been using mega crop and running it in my well water which pH 6.8 last time I checked. It has about 350 to 380 ppm. I don't go with ,,4grams mega crop but measure ppm instead. (I wanted a EC meter but the damn thing arrived from China and it was ppm only). I was running 1100 ppm and may run straight rain water for a while. I soak my soil with mixed rain and well water to get the initial ppm down. Also warmed the water before mixing it in the soil and water from the bottom the first time. It typically takes a while to dry out after transfer but I always soak the soil when transferring to eliminate air pockets....I'm not sure how long to keep these in vegging, typically my plants have not filled the kitty litter buckets with roots if I slapped them directly into flower after transplanting. (In the past)
My thinking is to let the roots grow a while by vegging longer so they fill the buckets, just using rain or a rain/well water mix for about another month or so.?
Unfortunately I'm not very organized. I had some ph strips and lost them ....will order some on Amazon. I have been using mega crop and running it in my well water which pH 6.8 last time I checked. It has about 350 to 380 ppm. I don't go with ,,4grams mega crop but measure ppm instead. (I wanted a EC meter but the damn thing arrived from China and it was ppm only). I was running 1100 ppm and may run straight rain water for a while. I soak my soil with mixed rain and well water to get the initial ppm down. Also warmed the water before mixing it in the soil and water from the bottom the first time. It typically takes a while to dry out after transfer but I always soak the soil when transferring to eliminate air pockets....I'm not sure how long to keep these in vegging, typically my plants have not filled the kitty litter buckets with roots if I slapped them directly into flower after transplanting. (In the past)
My thinking is to let the roots grow a while by vegging longer so they fill the buckets, just using rain or a rain/well water mix for about another month or so.?
