Reusing Soil-less Mix

[DarkLotus215]

I stumbled across http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65r2c_ZIsKg
and am wondering how one would go about reusing sunshine mix 4 or another soil less mix? Wait since I'm asking about soil less medium maybe I should not be posting this on the Soil forum...

 

[supermanlives]

add compost ,wormcastings,lime and anything else you want. some use enzymes to break down roots and stuff. hygrozyme. i let mine sit a month. no issues but i use organics. sunshine 4 is getting expensive here. 45.98 for my last bale

 

[señorsloth]

i reuse my fox farm happy frog over and over and over and over, there is a little soil in it at first, but that washes away after the first run, honestly i prefer it after most of the "soil" is gone, it makes using my lucas formula a lot easier, and ph stays more stable...

 

[DarkLotus215]

Okay, I'm liking this concept So could I just reuse the soil-less mix for my next run or do I have to let it sit a full month? Do you mix it with the hygrozyme asap and let it sit? Or do you dry it out then mix it with hygrozyme? I'm imagining dumping all the pots into one big container and tilling it till it's pretty dry then using the enzymes to break down any ramining plant matter. Any step by step directions for dumb blonds is appreciated

 

[vonforne]

Check out the Organic Soil sub forum. It discusses this subject in detail there.

 

[señorsloth]

i don't know about organic but with chemical ferts you can just throw in the new batch right away, i feed plain water for the last 2 weeks so when i harvest the soil is pretty depleted, and then i put new clones in the same day and give a full dose of lucas formula to get it started.

i know the organic dudes are doing a thing now with bed style growing where they don't till the soil at all between harvests, they just throw new stuff in where the old stuff was, just like in nature, i tend to think this would work fine, i grow in beds as well and it's something i recommend to everybody growing one strain at a time, or a few very similar ones. things can get kinda dicey when you have a bunch of nut sensitive plants growing in a bed with a bunch of nute hungry plant, but if they are all the same it is the best potting method out there...anyways i don't till my soil up, or wait 30 days, i just pull my rapid rooters out along with the stems, i try to leave as much of the roots in the soil, they will break down throughout the grow and add some nutrients. then i water the soil and plant my new clones an hour later.

it's a real relief to me just coming off a run with fresh soil, the ph of fresh soil isn't very stable, all that peat tends to make it very acidic over time, but whatevers in my ph 8 tap water making it ph 8(assuming calcium) lowers the acidity, and like with coco, after a few months of ph correction the peat doesn't get so acidic, it stabilizes a lot more and that can sure make life more easy, instead of trying to balance my ph 4.7 soil i end up with a more neutral soil ph and then i just water with neutral water and everything stays right in line for 6-10 runs, this time around i'm gonna see how long i can make these 2 bags of happy frog last, it sure is a lot stealthier than sneaking a new bag into my apartment once a month and an old one out!

 

[thecliogeek]

medium re-use

medium re-use

I know a lot of people frown on this, but I have re-used my Pro-Mix after the second bale I bought. What I do is I take a hose and flush it for about 5 minutes straight after taking out the plant. Then let is sit and drain for a couple days and then dump it into my "dirt container" which I fill all pots with. Since flushing it, you have really just washed everything good out of it. So it is just like buying a new bale of... say coco. Something that nothing in it.

I just add Hydrozene, Cal-Mag and a full dose of grow nutes to re-augment the medium. After that I am back to using only a 1/4 dose of nutes at every feeding in veg. My grow is in a business's basement and it's not like I can have a continuious stream of dirt bags coming out of it. So I reuse with no bad side-effects. I have been doing this for 3 years now. It has fine roots in it, which I leave, I do take out the actual root ball from it, but other than that, it is ready to re-use.