I was told that I should be re-using my soil if im putting good microbes in but with the root ball and stem it makes things tight for a new plant. Should I just pop the seed then top dress after a couple weeks? I’ve also heard you only have 24 to 36 hours to re-use living soil. Any ideas or tips will help thanks guys.
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Depends how big the pot is. Should maintain roots in the soil with cover crops. I think drying out of the soil would be more detrimental then lack of plants feeding microbes. Big stem and some roots can be removed after harvest. Usually giving the soil a few days to start breaking down the root ball then the majority just pops out with a twist. Leaving a hole to transplant the next round. Some soils will need to be reamended as well. Think about soil during the winter comes back every spring with new plants especially perennials.
Really depends on your grow style.
When you use bottled nutrients with soil, reusing it again is a lot less practical. Since some of the nutrition is coming from the soil and some is coming from the bottles, it may be a challenge to balance that out again for another run without doing some soil testing and having a really good understanding of whats in your bottles and in your soil mix.
Bottled nutrients + soil also usually results in a big fiberous rootball of really long white roots that sorta take over the pot. This might not really be ideal for reusing without breaking it all up and composting it.
When you feed your plant naturally from the soil without bottles, you typically get a very different root ball. Less long fibery roots and more short thin roots with lots of branching. These roots break down a lot faster and make the soil a lot easier to reuse. Usually if you wait a few days after harvest you can rip the old stalk out of the pot with a quick yank and it will leave all the small roots behind. These roots are basically little organic tubes with nutrients on the inside and beneficial microbes on the outside… so leaving them in the soil is actually really beneficial.
With my living soil grow I’ve tried re-using my soil both through breaking it up + re-amending and through a “no-till” topdressing type of method. Both work great, it just really depends on whats more practical for your grow.
Breaking up the soil and re-amending it works well but you need to set the soil aside in storage for a few weeks after re-amending it so it can “cook” and the amendments have time to break down.
Replanting in the same pot and topdressing (aka “no-till”) works well too, but isnt always practical. This requires bigger pots and you need to keep the soil moist and alive in between runs. You dont necessarily need to plant another cannabis plant in it right away, but you do need to keep it moist and treat the soil like it still has a plant in it. It does help a lot to have a cover crop or some other thing growing in there between runs. The more you can do to keep the soil ecosystem alive and healthy, the smoother the transition to the next run will be.
This was featrured on EP 822 FYI. Thanks for the post!