Reusing cloth bag pots and soil?

[dakotamoon]

This is my first grow, I have my plants in 10 gallon cloth pots, can I re-use the soil after harvest for the next grow?

Do the bags have to be laundered, for hygienic reasons?

 

[Grow Bro]

Hey man.
I would say if you got living soil then keep it and feed it. Or add to it. I would get new soil though if it was from bags.
Welcome to 420

 

[Blew Hiller]

You can reuse the bags. You can wash them in a light bleach solution if you had any mold issues.

 

[dakotamoon]

The soil did come out of bags, but I have added mycorrhizae, and enzymes - so I have made it living soil. Thanks, all - washing in hydrogen peroxide will do the trick.

 

[Grow Bro]

The soil did come out of bags, but I have added mycorrhizae, and enzymes - so I have made it living soil. Thanks, all - washing in hydrogen peroxide will do the trick.

I've grown with red wrigglers (composting worms) in a amended soil and coco mix with worm castings. At the end of grow worms were alive in pots. Sign of good clean nutrients.

 

[dakotamoon]

I've grown with red wrigglers (composting worms) in a amended soil and coco mix with worm castings. At the end of grow worms were alive in pots. Sign of good clean nutrients.

Thanks for reminding me, I have yet to add worm castings to my soil, but I will, that and silica.

 

[Grow Bro]

Thanks for reminding me, I have yet to add worm castings to my soil, but I will, that and silica.

While u at it you might as well add lava dust too. Its slow release to the plant and the worms convert it too. Like food for them.

 

[dakotamoon]

Now my hash plant is in a 10 gallon cloth bag, during the transplant I added: worm castings, silica, and nutri-zym! (my local hydro store doesn't stock canna zym! My plants are just so darn healthy - it's so positive to watch, and smell them as they mature.

 

[dakotamoon]

 

[Grow Bro]

Looking sweet dude!

 

[bobrown14]

Plants look healthy. On the right track here!

Whats in the soil for aeration? That would be concern for re-use.

Soil is made for re-use. Farmers don't dig up the field and throw out the used soil right?

Google "no-till cannabis" and read up. Re-using soil in bags has become an art form.

Not only is it doable but your plants and the soil keep getting better and better and your work less and less as you grow forward.

I grow no-till been doing it for a long time indoors and outdoors.

Compost is key! Make your own and get it right. Worry not you will.

 

[Slammy Pajama]

Plants look healthy. On the right track here!

Whats in the soil for aeration? That would be concern for re-use.

Soil is made for re-use. Farmers don't dig up the field and throw out the used soil right?

Google "no-till cannabis" and read up. Re-using soil in bags has become an art form.

Not only is it doable but your plants and the soil keep getting better and better and your work less and less as you grow forward.

I grow no-till been doing it for a long time indoors and outdoors.

Compost is key! Make your own and get it right. Worry not you will.

Sorry to jump in on an old thread, I'm just curious about your concerns with aeration when re-using soil... I've currently got my two ladies in a supersoil mix with roughly 1/5 total volume being coco coir and 1/6 total volume being perlite for aeration and water retention. They love it, and I am intending to continue re-using the soil, no-till style for future grows by top-dressing and maybe AACT's.

Obviously, the coir will be broken down by the microherd, and i think the perlite eventually too, right? How does one go about getting those aeration properties back into the soil, without mixing more of these types of materials back in and destroying the fungi and other beasties we've worked so hard to cultivate??

 

[HugePeckerhead]

Sorry to jump in on an old thread, I'm just curious about your concerns with aeration when re-using soil... I've currently got my two ladies in a supersoil mix with roughly 1/5 total volume being coco coir and 1/6 total volume being perlite for aeration and water retention. They love it, and I am intending to continue re-using the soil, no-till style for future grows by top-dressing and maybe AACT's.

Obviously, the coir will be broken down by the microherd, and i think the perlite eventually too, right? How does one go about getting those aeration properties back into the soil, without mixing more of these types of materials back in and destroying the fungi and other beasties we've worked so hard to cultivate??

just tagging 2 members that I think can help you with this. @Emilya @Nunyabiz

 

[Slammy Pajama]

just tagging 2 members that I think can help you with this. @Emilya @Nunyabiz

Thanks!

 

[Nunyabiz]

Sorry to jump in on an old thread, I'm just curious about your concerns with aeration when re-using soil... I've currently got my two ladies in a supersoil mix with roughly 1/5 total volume being coco coir and 1/6 total volume being perlite for aeration and water retention. They love it, and I am intending to continue re-using the soil, no-till style for future grows by top-dressing and maybe AACT's.

Obviously, the coir will be broken down by the microherd, and i think the perlite eventually too, right? How does one go about getting those aeration properties back into the soil, without mixing more of these types of materials back in and destroying the fungi and other beasties we've worked so hard to cultivate??

You cant.
That's why you start out with proper long term aeration in your soil.
At least 30% of the soil should be aeration.
That 30% aeration is made up of 45% Rice Hulls, 45% Pumice and 10% Precharged Biochar.
The pumice and biochar will last longer than you will and the Rice Hulls will break down over time but it slowly breaks down into silica.
Perlite breaks down quick, floats to the surface and can harden your soil tilth.

With proper aeration in a fabric pot and worms in the pot and a cover crop you basically cant over water.

And if you're wanting to do LOS no-till it needs to be a good Clackamas Coots type soil recipe of which there are many DIY recipes and put in a flat minimum of 15 gallon fabric pots.
Need to inoculate with a good mycorrhazae inoculate, and compost teas, and feed the microbes with Yucca, aloe vera, and sprouted seed teas.

Iam on my 7th grow in same no-till soil with only a few amendments added between grows and my soil is richer and better now than it was the first grow. The worms in the pot and the cover crop make a huge difference in how your soil replenishes itself.
Even the Rove Beetles I use for pest management add a lot of nutrients to the soil, there are 1000s of them and they only live about 20 days so 1000s of little dead bodies being created within my little microbiome every month and all those little bodies added a lot of insect fras plus helped break down various elements into the soil, they love Gro-kashi and swarm all over it.
The cover crop adds nutrients to the soil especially nitrogen.
The top 4 to 5" of my soil right now is mostly high quality worm castings that is true Unicorn Poop being created everyday 24/7/365 right in the pot.
So the soil just gets better with age like an old growth forest.

 

[Emilya Green]

Sorry to jump in on an old thread, I'm just curious about your concerns with aeration when re-using soil... I've currently got my two ladies in a supersoil mix with roughly 1/5 total volume being coco coir and 1/6 total volume being perlite for aeration and water retention. They love it, and I am intending to continue re-using the soil, no-till style for future grows by top-dressing and maybe AACT's.

Obviously, the coir will be broken down by the microherd, and i think the perlite eventually too, right? How does one go about getting those aeration properties back into the soil, without mixing more of these types of materials back in and destroying the fungi and other beasties we've worked so hard to cultivate??

As someone who has used the same soil for the last 6 years without any trouble, I will give you my take on this, and without an advertisement for a certain mix of soil. I use a layered approach to my grows, with a highly mineralized supersoil in the bottom third of my containers and a FoxFarm Ocean Forest/Roots Organic 101 mix as the upper base soil in the rest of the container. Both of these layers have ample amounts of perlite (about 20%) and the the base soils do have a coco component to them.
I find that this method will work for about 3 grows without additional attention, in a no till operation. After that, the coco and sphagnum moss in the base soils do break down and need to be flushed out of there or the soil will become acidic and the mineral content starts to become depleted. Top dressing is not enough to fix this depletion, and the soil at that point needs to be reammended with minerals and cooked for a month or so to become viable again. There are packaged mineral rejuvenation products available just for this purpose. Also, AACT is not designed to add a bunch of nutrients either to the plants or the soil. An AACT is to grow microbes, providing just enough of the food they need so as to develop the specific microbes you need, but you can not think of an AACT as a nutrient, either for the plant or the soil.
Perlite does break down over time too, and it seems that every year I am buying another bag of it just to get the soil back to the consistency that I like, always trying to maintain about a 20% perlite content.
So does adding some of this back into the soil between grows harm the microlife? No it does not. The soil can dry out and the structures can be broken up as you rip out the center mass of the last rootball, but enough of the tribe remain, even in a passive hibernation state, to quickly start repopulating the new rootball once you start activating the soil again with more water and plant activity.

 

[bobrown14]

I use a Coots mix - been growing in the same mix for 3+ years now. Have had it tested and re-tested. It's as good as it was when I started using it.

For aeration I use 1/3 by volume Per-lite. I thinks its pretty much glass rocks and doesn't break down is my understanding. I also added it some bio-char but not a significant amount. I don't really worry about compaction.

The soil gets filled with roots. After the plant get chopped those roots quickly decompose and leave space in the soil for new roots for the next plant.

It works.

 

[Slammy Pajama]

Awesome, thanks for the input everyone! So much good learning to be gleaned from all the great minds on this site!