Salt build up in recycled soil

[moses wellfleet]

Not often discussed topic.

After top dressing dry amendments I'm my 15 gal SIP containers for the last 2 years, I tasted the reservoir water and became suspicious that shit was not right.

Fired up the old trusty EC meter and my god some containers more than 3.0 m/s.

Question is can I leach it out of the soil of will this measure only be partially effective?

Thank you to 40degsouth for igniting this spark in my brain.

 

[40degsouth]

Hey Moses, thanks for that, it’s making me feel very special.
l was wondering how you went with all that, did you end up flushing them or, not yet?? Personally I’d get that salt out asap. I think you’ll wash out a lot of your available calcium also but it’s very transient in the soil anyway, particularly salty ones because all the exchange sites are taken up ( that could be a reason why Butt’s soils are displaying calcium and magnesium deficiencies .....excess salt build up....maybe) What about adding some gypsum afterwards, just in case??
Im pretty sure as long as you don’t drown it for days the microbes will be ok, hopefully Microbeman might be about and tell us how microbes behave in soils with excess salt build up and which species proliferate.
l’ve been running a bit of an experiment over the last few years using halophytes to sequester mineral salts out of the soil and it seems to be working but l really can’t tell any difference between side by sides. It also turns out Dankwolf has purslane growing in his big mounds and is using it as a cover crop which grows during the summer and dies off during winter. This would be a great experiment for someone like you to try Moses, especially seeming as you already have everything ready to go.....wink, wink.
Isn’t it amazing just how the plant has the ability to thrive in such adverse environments, it never ceases to amaze me.
Cheers,
40.

 

[moses wellfleet]

Ok so the purslane would take up the salt, you could possibly rotate purslaine between runs?

I have let it get so bad I will need to leach the existing soil heavily though. Which I am doing right now.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Mr. Wellfleet, take a peek at the post I made about Ph changing. My reservoir is always gaining Ph, and I think it may be because my SIP control box allows the tubs to return water to the reservoir. If I top water like I did yesterday to add some tea, the reservoir will go up. This is one of the differences in the kind of control box I use (waterfall). I think it is a good idea to replace the water in our beds to keep it at the Ph we want. You top feed your SIP bed, and the water has nowhere to go.

My water has no EC reading from the tap. The reservoir added about a gallon because I top watered that much, and now the EC is between 200 and 300. One thing I have been doing, which I m going to stop, is adding some epsom salts for the Mg. I am going to replace the reservoir water now, run the water pumps, and see what the reservoir does after more exchange with the tubs.

My next iteration on the control box will have a way to pump the SIP water level down, so water can be replaced. All I need is another pump, but there isn't room in there.

I dumped the reservoir water on a spot of grass that I will watch, to see if it does better than the surrounding grass.

 

[thailer]

my soil looks just like vermicompost after 6-7 months and worm bins have leachate plus your soil can leach nutrients too. i like to use it as the compost portion to build new soil, so i have not used the same soil the past two years. the longest i've used the same soil is for two rounds and i add 1/4 of the amendments back for the second round.

my recipe is 1/2 cup each per cuft kelp, crab, neem and 1 cup per of CaCO3 lime or oyster shell, gypsum, basalt.

a reammend would be half of that.

 

[40degsouth]

I forgot how long Microbeman used his soil for but he basically only brewed microbes to feed the plants. We talked about it over at the “Local Materials” thread and I’d recommend it to any indoor grower. The man is helping us to understand the future of farming and easy ways to save the planet, one of my all time heroes.
40.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Microbemans recipe is a big step in the soil plan. https://www.icmag.com/forum/marijua...ic-soil-from-start-through-recycling?t=241964

With soil you have to also grow critters. I have SF and HB nematodes coming.

 

[moses wellfleet]

It's not that easy to leach the salt from containers. I suspect salty pockets remain where the water has passed them by and chosen a path of least resistance.

Will try soaking for long periods to make sure more salts are dissolved.