Reusing old soil, is it worth it?

[beard o]

I only grow indoors, in a tent.
Normally grow in 5 gallon soft pots. However on this last grow, I tried 10 gallon soft pots. Hoping the extra soil would enhance root growth, and in turn bigger plants, ultimately more and bigger buds.

So far it's worked, I'm happy with my grow. But now I'm wondering about all this extra soil. I normally use either Happy Frog or Ocean Forest. Four 5 gallon pots per tent equals 20 gallons of soil.
In the past I've chucked all the used soil outside in my tomato garden. But now, four 10 gallon pots equals 40 gallons of expensive soil. I'm having second thoughts about chucking it?

Can it be successfully amended? Can I take used Happy Frog, amend with worm castings, myco, bone meal, maybe some coco or Promix, and make it as good as new?
I do it with my tomatoes with great results. But I leaned long ago what works for tomatoes doesn't necessarily work on cannabis.

 

[Dwight Monk]

Guess it would depend how much money you spend on putting the nutrients back into the soil or increased use of nutrients. I'm kind of the "if it works don't screw with it or it will be broke" point of view. It was working for me to buy it new, and my outdoor garden loved the perlite and not the clay crap we have in the ground here a couple inches down. I'm sure there are threads on here about reusing soil, as I know a bunch on coco mediums, search engine here isn't too bad or better than a lot of places on the net.

 

[Phytoplankton]

I’ve amended ocean forest for years. It’s not that difficult , and is certainly less expensive than buying new soil every grow.

 

[Azimuth]

Can it be successfully amended? Can I take used Happy Frog, amend with worm castings, myco, bone meal, maybe some coco or Promix, and make it as good as new?
I do it with my tomatoes with great results. But I leaned long ago what works for tomatoes doesn't necessarily work on cannabis.

Absolutely! There's a number of organic grow mixes (Coot's, The Rev's TLO) that are simply amended back between runs.

Also, some of the amendments like your bone meal take well longer than a single grow to break down so 2nd and 3rd runs are often times even better than first run soil.

Go check out the GeeSpot thread. A kind of organic hangout with lots of growers amending organic soils run after run.

 

[Justin Goody]

I use FF Happy frog indoors. Generally I dump it outside when I’m done…slowly filling the garden with great soil.
Sometimes I run low on soil and can’t get any right away…so I have to reuse it.
I personally don’t think (now) that it even needs to be amended for just the second use. I get all the roots out of it I can. Bake it if you’re worried about bad bacteria. Occasionally I add soil conditioner/myco of some type
I start my seeds in solo cups with NOT used soil, and once they are ready to move, their roots can handle whatever was left from the last grow. My nutes seem to handle the rest.

 

[Doctor Trevor]

How much of that ten gallon pot would be soil? How much would be root?