Re-using my Organic Soil

[Midnight Tokar]

I want to re-use my Organic soil after this run and I'm trying to figure out how much and what amendments to use.
I started with LC's Soiless Mix #1,
50% Peat, 30% Rice Hulls, 20% EWC plus 2 TBLS Dolomite per gallon.
To that I added Recipe #1 Organic plant food (slightly adjusted)
For each gallon I added:
2 TBLS Bone Meal, 1 TBLS Blood Meal, 1 TBLS Kelp meal, 1 teaspoon Espoma Garden-tone and 1 teaspoon Soft Rock Phosphate.

I will have approx. 25 gallons to re-amend. I will also have:
Crab Meal, Fish Bone Meal, Neem Cake and Alfalfa Meal.

This run I watered with RO water and every other watering Molasses tea. I also made a tea with Kelp Meal, Bone Meal, Molasses and fed twice.
The plants (should finish in 2 weeks) are doing extremely well EXCEPT:
I vegged them until they showed sex at approx. 35 days and then transplanted to 3 gallon bags, left under the 400 watt MH 18/6 for another week and then switched to 12/12 flower with 400 watt HPS. These plants are a Flo cross and I've grown them 5 times now. They have never been more than 5 feet tall and this run they went to 7 plus feet and I had to bend them severely to keep under the light without burning them .

This was my first completely organic grow and I'm impressed and I want to re-use my soil but I'm at a loss as to how much and what to add to the used soil. I'm assuming that if I added the same amount of nutes that it will be too hot? I also assume I'll need to use the same amount of EWC but probably no more rice hulls?
Thanks for any advice, MT

 

[Sat X RB]

as someone who dislikes work I too want to recycle my soil. thinking about this there seems to me NO WAY anyone can supply a formula to do this. who can know how much of what mineral the last crop used up? I think this is unknowable.

so what I 've done is used last years summer soil to grow winter vegies ... and watched the vegies for signs of deficiency. (Nitrogen was clearly deficient.) I figure if I get an idea of deficiency from observing vegie growth ... then next year I 'll have something of an idea of how to re-amend my soil.

but Organics is an on-going experiment ... is it not?

 

[floral]

Assume you read the relevant threads in the Organic Recycled Soil subforum?

 

[xmobotx]

in a living soil; proportions {such as albrecht ratios et al} arent as critical as gardeners tend to consider them

i have always relied on diversity and made balanced additions where i would use 1 TBS to amend my initial mix; i use 1 tsp to re-amend

considerations like a heavy mulch w/ EWC {quality EWC} or even a plant amendment like the comfrey that cootz suggests can work

again; ratios and amounts arent that critical when you have good humus sources and maintain a living environment in the soil

 

[Midnight Tokar]

I agree that ratios and exact amounts are impossible to know without very expensive tests. I am mostly interested in what others do that seems to work for them.
I spent a couple of hours browsing the Organic Recycled Soil sub-forum but saw nothing that gave amounts....EDIT: I actually was in the "[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sticky: Living organic soil from start through recycling[/FONT] thread above this section.
If in living soils proportions don't matter much, would it be safe to assume that one could then take their used soil and simply add the same amounts as if "building" the brand new soil and it would not be harmful to the plants ( of course, after properly "cooking" the soil)?

 

[xmobotx]

too much is simply going to be too much/you may get away w/ it a time {or 2} but; you already amended the soil and chances are it didn't use all of that

 

[TheSmellOfGreen]

In my experience the only way to reuse soil successfully and know what amendments to add is to watch the plants and keep detailed records. I tried a few times just winging it or running off a recipe list and every subsequent batch got a little more off from where I wanted it.

Once I kept track better, ran a bit less heavy on the amendments, and started noting deficiencies everything worked itself out pretty well. I can now almost run off sight (but still go back to the notes) and I can keep my soil almost standard from run to run. But I also have enough to run 2 rotations so I allow a pretty good amount of time for everything to break down and that keeps everything dialed in a bit better.

 

[xmobotx]

weird; my soil just gets better & better

not alone w/ that observation either

there is a ton of info in the original ROLS thread & the ROLS megathread {page 2 is instant gold} & i have detailed the recipes i used

 

[bigshrimp]

MidnightToker

Yes you can just add a new batch of soil 50/50 to you used soil. I've been doing for a while. Just bump up the amendments and ewc a little in the new batch, and watch out for accumulating slow release materials and liming agents.

Works great for inoculating you fresh soil with critters, and rapidly establishing a functional soil ecosystem.

 

[milkyjoe]

I agree that ratios and exact amounts are impossible to know without very expensive tests. I am mostly interested in what others do that seems to work for them.
I spent a couple of hours browsing the Organic Recycled Soil sub-forum but saw nothing that gave amounts....EDIT: I actually was in the "[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Sticky: Living organic soil from start through recycling[/FONT] thread above this section.
If in living soils proportions don't matter much, would it be safe to assume that one could then take their used soil and simply add the same amounts as if "building" the brand new soil and it would not be harmful to the plants ( of course, after properly "cooking" the soil)?

20 bucks for a test at Logan Labs. Worth it to know what is in your soil imo...if for no other reason than to avoid Mg or K going too high on you.

Whether it is safe or not depends entirely on the cec of your soil, how close you are to already filling that cec and whether or not your new adds are already composted or not.

I hate working in the dark when it is so easy to find out. Just me though...others seem to detest knowing the truth. (ok that was way too harsh, they prefer to trust living soil)

 

[TheSmellOfGreen]

I'll have to check out that Logan Labs, seems too affordable to not be useful when determining where to take your soil blend after a few uses. Thanks milkyjoe

 

[Midnight Tokar]

20 bucks for a test at Logan Labs. Worth it to know what is in your soil imo...if for no other reason than to avoid Mg or K going too high on you.

Whether it is safe or not depends entirely on the cec of your soil, how close you are to already filling that cec and whether or not your new adds are already composted or not.

I hate working in the dark when it is so easy to find out. Just me though...others seem to detest knowing the truth. (ok that was way too harsh, they prefer to trust living soil)

I'll have to look into Logan labs, I'd prefer to not have my plants show a deficiency before adding to the soil.

I also read in the [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Organic Recycled Soil section where many people do very well with adding very little to re-amend their soil.[/FONT]

 

[xmobotx]

w/ an outdoor setting where your soil could be anything from an old sawmill to an ancient riverbed/glacial flow/pine forest etc etc etc; a soil test makes great sense

why not?

a scratch mix based on known ingredients & particularly if they are diverse plant-based ingredients/not necessarily

BUT;

if a person feels they have lost the sense of what's all in their mix or whatever might be your rationale & you feel you want to balance things well; why not?

i may get some of my potting mix tested myself

on the verge actually of getting my outdoor soil tested anyway

 

[Midnight Tokar]

w/ an outdoor setting where your soil could be anything from an old sawmill to an ancient riverbed/glacial flow/pine forest etc etc etc; a soil test makes great sense

why not?

a scratch mix based on known ingredients & particularly if they are diverse plant-based ingredients/not necessarily

BUT;

if a person feels they have lost the sense of what's all in their mix or whatever might be your rationale & you feel you want to balance things well; why not?

i may get some of my potting mix tested myself

on the verge actually of getting my outdoor soil tested anyway

Yea, what I'm thinking of doing is sending some of my "well spent" soil from a long flowering Sativa and see exactly just how spent it really is.

 

[milkyjoe]

w/ an outdoor setting where your soil could be anything from an old sawmill to an ancient riverbed/glacial flow/pine forest etc etc etc; a soil test makes great sense

why not?

a scratch mix based on known ingredients & particularly if they are diverse plant-based ingredients/not necessarily

BUT;

if a person feels they have lost the sense of what's all in their mix or whatever might be your rationale & you feel you want to balance things well; why not?

i may get some of my potting mix tested myself

on the verge actually of getting my outdoor soil tested anyway

So your compost part is like my compost part is like someone else's. I find them to be all over the place. A friend ran Cootz mix and ended up way high on both P and Mg...neither of which Cootz adds much of...from the compost part.

Just saying...probably works out anyways. But no two soil mixes are going to be alike...scratch or not. Sooner or later without metrics people is gonna get bit in the ass.

 

[xmobotx]

well; 2+ months later but yeah ~your compost "part" may be different & compost {or EWC} really is the most critical component in a living soil mix

So critical that; if your compost is alive it will sustain growth w/ reasonably good balances of nutrients {i.e. you can't have some extreme excess or deficit but, they don't have to be "albrecht balances"} & the more that humus component is thriving, the more this is true {perhaps some if that is related to a balance of sorts in the compost part though more about C:N ratio}

the living soil approach leans heavily on diversity & plant based amendments ~which tends to put you within tolerances. If you are drawing all of your plant based inputs from a certain locale and it has serious imbalances, your compost will also mimic those imbalances {& probably won't thrive}

I did do a soil test & found both my container mix & outdoor soil to have a similar profile {which I attributed to using my field weeds to make compost for my container mix} mostly they both needed more Ca and more P. While a few trace elements were a little low; none were too low to really matter except boron

I can't say I've seen any improvement since the tests since I don't have any data really to work from yet

 

[h.h.]

I see more and more folks going no til and topdress with great success.
Rather than thinking of organics as an ongoing experiment,I prefer to think of it as an ongoing rediscovery of well established methods.

 

[milkyjoe]

So critical that; if your compost is alive it will sustain growth w/ reasonably good balances of nutrients {i.e. you can't have some extreme excess or deficit but, they don't have to be "albrecht balances"} & the more that humus component is thriving, the more this is true {perhaps some if that is related to a balance of sorts in the compost part though more about C:N ratio}

I personally think the C:N ratio of the overall soil is a major key. When you think about it we add a ton of carbon when we use 33-50% sphagnum peat. A bunch of our N goes to feeding the microbes breaking this stuff down. And I think that is why the mixes literally get better over time...a narrowing C:N ratio and generation after generation of microbes dying and the giving up the mineralized bodies along with recycling the N

It all comes down to compost quality without testing and correcting. If you have high quality compost no worries. But if you don't look out. I think that fact is why some wildly succeed and some fail and move on.

Anyways...I agree you do not need definite Albrecht ratios. Enough Ca is enough, you are using perlite or something to do half the work of Ca in these mixes, keeping the soil open for air. So it isn't like it is critical...but it is a damn nice guideline.

I am a bit more a stickler on micros though...I think they tremendously effect quality...I want plenty, along with ultra trace stuff, lots of kelp and rock dust for me. And amending the micros with sulfate salts if I have to.

 

[SpicySativa]

My $0.02....

Each time I recycle my soil, I am trying to add diversity. Rather than add the same stuff back, I try to use new ingredients.

For example, your nitrogen came as blood meal last time, so use a combo of alfalfa, neem, and crab meals this time (something like 0.5 TBSP/gal would seem about right to me). I personally am not a big fan of blood meal as an N source. It provides a quick jolt of N, but doesn't work well as a long-term source (IMO).

Generally, I'd shoot for adding things back at less than half the amount you initially added, and allowing the soil plenty of time to compost before you use it.Ao

 

[Midnight Tokar]

My $0.02....

Each time I recycle my soil, I am trying to add diversity. Rather than add the same stuff back, I try to use new ingredients.

For example, your nitrogen came as blood meal last time, so use a combo of alfalfa, neem, and crab meals this time (something like 0.5 TBSP/gal would seem about right to me). I personally am not a big fan of blood meal as an N source. It provides a quick jolt of N, but doesn't work well as a long-term source (IMO).

Generally, I'd shoot for adding things back at less than half the amount you initially added, and allowing the soil plenty of time to compost before you use it.Ao

That totally makes sense to me and I'm trying to get away from the blood meal altogether. I was somewhat surprised to see how good the Neem meal was for supplying a source of NPK, not to mention its insect control properties.

I was not able to re-amend my last grow as I found root aphids in the soil when chopping the earliest plants. Explains the phantom nutrient deficient signs I was fighting..........