So let me see if I understand this correctly Bob. When you finish a grow, you save your soil.....got that. Do you do anything to it after you have used it on the previous grow or do you just end up regrowing in it without adding anything. If that is the case, how many runs do you figure you get out of it before you either add amendments back into it.....or ditch it in favor of the new stuff? And if you do add something to it, do you add anything other than EWC and compost like you described?
Yes I run no-til so that's re-using the soil over and over then say after 5-7 flower runs I recycle it into a container and mix in more amendments (I have a recipe for that) and add compost and EWC. For the first 3-5 rounds tho, I don't need anything added.
I cut a hole where the old root ball was the same size as the #2 nursery pot and put the VEG plant in the hole with mykos. I sometimes top dress some amendments but not always... I tend to top dress more as the soil in the pot gets older. Basically the N gets used up over time so adding in compost/EWC will boost the N deficiency along with some extra amendments I have already mixed up in a bucket. A few cups of amendments and good to go another few rounds.
I just went into the woods today and gathered about 10 gallons of worm castings. Took me about 20 minutes. Good time of year to find castings, all the leaves are gone and the green leaves haven't started falling yet.
Growing organically is a leap of faith. Once that leap is made, and the results start to amaze the farmer = converted. Many folks are hard pressed to let the plants go and do their thing. I am lazy and prefer to not worry about it and all I do is IPM to control mites and molds (all organic).
This round I'm busy tho... trying to figure out how to fit 7.5 ft tall plants in a 6.5 ft light canopy! This was the 5th round in these no-til pots and the plants did a 3X stretch in 29 days... I was away out of the country.
So now I gotta get busy and rope these cowgirls up. Its a nice challenge. So far not successful. My better half needs to get involved. I need a 2nd set of hands to move monsters around.... not ideal.
My amendment recipe is:
1/2 cups Karanja cake meal & Neem cake meal (helps with bugs)
1/2 cups Alfalfa meal (N source)
1/2 cups Crab Shell Meal or powdered oyster shell (Ca and chitin)
1 cups ground malted barley
1 cups Kelp meal
1/2 cups dried nettle/yarrow/borage/horsetail or use freshly picked if they grow wild near you. We have all of these locally or in our gardens.
1-2 tbsp. mycorrhizae / Mykes
I mix up a bucket full of this ^^^ and put a lid on it and keep it handy when needed.
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You can mix old with the new and add some amendments like EWC + Kelp meal + some of the amendment mix.
What I do is:
keep a large container of old soil
have a large container of new mix soil that has had a soil test
For each new cannabis start we use the old mix into a fresh #2 nursery pot (2gal). Starts don't need a lot of nutrients so older soil is perfect for seedlings.
For clones I fill the #2 nursery pot with new fresh soil.
Each final container
For each up-pot to final containers - I take out 2gal of the old soil and put that into the old soil mix container and put the plant from the #2 pot into the hole with some extra mycos, water and into flower they go.
In late winter we use up all the old soil for veggie and flower starts for outdoors .... then mix up another new batch of soil.
Nothing gets wasted and everything gets recycled back into the gardens. I don't compost the old soil, we add it into the outdoor gardens with all the new plants... we grow a lot of plants outdoors so it gets used up..mix a new batch of soil in early spring..
around and around goes... very similar to
biodynamic gardening.
Hope that made sense....
