Reusing soil ?

Hou_Stonestarted grow question 2y ago

For the first time I am thinking of reusing the soil from my last crop (universal soil used once. bionutrients added months ago) I imagine making a mixture of 50% old soil and 50% new I'm wondering if I should clean or do anything to my old soil before reusing it? Advices? 😃☮️

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LSchnabelanswered grow question 2y ago

Check out a YouTube series called Build A Soil. He does a great job explaining how to continuously re-use your soil. He does go super into the weeds on some videos about being 100% organic and all natural using cover crops and stuff like that but the basics are the same. If you re use your soil, you will need to amend it with nutrients that have been consumed by your previous grow. If you are planning on just using all synthetic nutrients the whole grow then really the only thing you will need to worry about is flushing the old soil out switch pH water to make sure there is no build up of salts. A lot of people will have two different batches of soil they use and cycle through them. This allows you to re amend the old soil and let things break down over 2-3 months so it will be good to go for the next grow. Often times if you have spent a great deal of time and energy building up your soils microbiology then your far better keeping it then using dead soil in a bag. I hope this helps.

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Robertsanswered grow question 2y ago

If you want to reuse old soil it is best it is composted first. It will likely be too hot from previous grow for a seedling. If it was coco it can be used a few times, being easily flushed out since coco is impossible to overwater in. Just very ph sensitive. Soil is different and it's current npk ratio after a grow is likely a issue.

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Scrubbyjimbobanswered grow question 2y ago

I reuse soil all the time and the world hasn't shifted off it's axis yet. Clean out as much of the rootmass as you can....you'll never get all the little capillary roots out but they'll break down before too long. A good sifting will suffice. If you used nutrient additives in your water, give it a good thorough rinsing to make sure there are no salts built up in the media. That's about it, from there you can either ammend the soil to introduce some fresh nutrients or if you plan to just add your nutes to your water then you can skip ammendments.

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Organomananswered grow question 2y ago

To avoid many issues, the "Golden Rule" is..........new plants, new soil. Simple. Why risk an entire grow by trying to cheap out on one of the most important ingredients, quality soil??

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Tmasmanswered grow question 2y ago

Dude, I reuse my soil. Well, I give it some rest time; I'm using about 350 liters of soil, and I have another 350 liters resting for about 3 months, where I water it once a week. I added several beneficial bacteria, worms, wood ash, and a soil mix specifically made to add to old soils. The resting time helps the bacteria and worms recover the soil.

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