So after talking with 8 different hydro shops that all sell soil I think I got the best answer.For obvious reasons hydro shops want you do buy their soil and one of them slipped today when he bashed the local mega farm store that sells soil by the semi truck load.After some time I was thinking to my self, what just happened just now.What happened was he bashed the other company that sells "Dirt" called the "420 mix" and I thought to my self these dick heads have been lying to me!I had been buying "Amended soil" by the tote from these guys every year and tossing the soil out after harvest.Im no expert but the best harvest I ever had was using shity soil by the semi truck load and feeding the plant LARGE AMOUNTS OF FOOD!The worst harvest I had was when I used their high end soil from hydro shops and feed the plants very lightly as "Their is already food in there, don't want to burn"I got small plants that year!Then some Hydro store that I like pretty well told me that although they recommend new soil every year he said this:1. Pull the root mass out2. make a strong tea and tea the smart pot pretty darn good and use hygrozyme to eat the small remaining roots.3. Plant and feed the shit out of the plant the next year as being the soil has largely been used up of its nutrients.I have started this right away with 5 plants with Foxfarm bags and 5 plants with reused dirt and put them on a heavy feeding schedule. If I get the results I think I will then I'm never buying dirt again!The worst advice I have ever had from a hydro shop was:"Dont feed to much there bucko, you know our custom soil mix is very hot and the plants can live off the nutrients for weeks!"Bull shit, Ima reuse my dirt and feed the fuck out of my plants.
Honest Answers About Reusing Soil.
- Thread starter itsaplant
- Start date
asdewqasdfgh
Active Member
dont reuse soil man. just from experience it may attract gnats because you have decomposing material in there for long periods of time. and bugs suck.
angryblackman
Well-Known Member
Don't reuse soil! You can trust what comes out of the bag or you can mix the soil yourself.
Subcool, DoubleJJ, Dirttyd, and TMB have all posted their soil recipes in the past and you can add or subtract whatever you want to it. I personally will be giving DJJ's soil a shot this season.
Subcool, DoubleJJ, Dirttyd, and TMB have all posted their soil recipes in the past and you can add or subtract whatever you want to it. I personally will be giving DJJ's soil a shot this season.
LT1RX7 Drifter
Active Member
all Bs i have reused soil some have been in my garden for more then a few years and i no bug issues, crops are better on reused/amended soil this has been seen time and time again but on a hobby level ie weed grower and commercial growers alike, i have read the thesus on the study during my colleges years so go fetch some real evidence that says other wise, i will add that the secrect to reusing soil is amend it with quality nutes, no syntetic crap all natural, let it compose a month in a controlled area like a garage and use at will, if a bug issue ever arises you then and only then throw out soil to the garden outside as it will add valuble media to native soils , i bought 20 bags about 3 yrs ago after a gnat issue and buy one bag a year since then to add back to reused soil for loss from root removale i dont use hydrozyme or any of that crap i do add gh subculture once every year at a slightly higher rate of application
LT1RX7 Drifter
Active Member
yah all of which started with a base soil mix of some sort that came from a bag sold from a store that was most likely a hydroponics garden supplier, of which 90% are to hot if there are any added nutrients to the mixture, if there is nothing wrong with the soil reuse it just take the right step to clean and prepare it for reuse its not hard or very time consumingDon't reuse soil! You can trust what comes out of the bag or you can mix the soil yourself.
Subcool, DoubleJJ, Dirttyd, and TMB have all posted their soil recipes in the past and you can add or subtract whatever you want to it. I personally will be giving DJJ's soil a shot this season.
angryblackman
Well-Known Member
You are correct.. I assumed (my bad) that he was just talking about taking last years soil and just reusing it by only adding food while the plant is growing. I should have specified that you should reuse soil ONLY if properly amended. 
Sunbiz1
Well-Known Member
This a long re-paste, but worth the read:
- Endless Soil Remixing with the 3LBS
We are about to go totally against the advice that Cervantes and Rosenthal and many others give concerning soil . . . the three_little_birds want to tell people that we ALWAYS re-use our soil . . . No soil has left the garden's of the three_little_birds since before the turn of the millennium . . .
we were discussing this among "the birds" the other nite - and one line that a little bird said comes to mind . . . "Farmer's don't strip their topsoil after a harvest - or even a few - in fact their soil is their most precious commodity - why should it be different for indoor gardening as long as proper care is taken to build healthy soil?"
Some experts will tell folks to throw out their soil after every grow . . . and we've known plenty of commercial growers that happily comply to make sure they do not have pest or nutrient problems. . . Maybe that even is the best solution for your grow, we can't say for sure, as always your mileage may vary. . .
We are poor simple medical users . . . and spending something like $20 for a bag of FoxFarm soil rubbed us wrong . . . our indoor herb grows have evolved to use 2'x3' containers . . . so with our container system it might take 2+ full bags of that soil for 3 plants in one of those containers . . . The three_little_birds wanted to save our money to purchase top quality genetics . . . not to buy simple dirt . . . so we decided there had to be a better way!
Now again . . . someone who is involved in commercial (rather than personal medical) production might not be so inclined to bother with making sure their soils stay healthy and all the work we go through to ensure our soil's health. . . but for us it is a labor of love and we feel our results speak for themselves. . . anyway, like we said . . our soil never leaves our grow . . . it has all been recycled to the point that we could not even begin to tell you how many times it's been through our system . . .
A good commercial potting mix has always been the base for our soil. . . We look for a product which is 100% organic . . . we recommend that you avoid ALL chemical salt ferts like the plague if you value your soil health . . . This especially includes timed-released chem ferts like osmocote . . .
Depending on what we have found for soil . . . we go from there. . . Some cheap organic soil mixes contain little more than peat, pearlite, and dolomite lime. . . These absolutely need amending to start off. . . Some organic soil mixes are much more complete and need little or no amending for starters. . .
Organic mushroom compost is certainly one of the hot soil mediums these days . . . and we've certainly had great success mixing it in with our soil remixes to add fresh organic matter. . . we often have top-dressed with fresh mushroom compost as well . . . after a couple years of experience with mushroom compost . . . weve found it to be a great source for an indoor soil base . . . and its proven to work well with remixes . . .
Now well walk you through a description of the soil building process . . . lets imagine we started with an already amended soil mix like FoxFarm Ocean Forest as the base . . . perhaps mixed � and � with mushroom compost and added perlite . . .
Once through it's first grow (the plants fed only 100% organic with earth juice, guano and alfalfa teas, fish ferts, and liquid kelp). . . our container of soil has it's root balls pulled and it is dumped into a very large rubbermaid container w/ a lid (50 gallon container is our standard) . . . These container's are longer than our 2x3 growing containers, so with 2 people lifting and dumping . . . it's not too hard to keep this step neat. . . Each bin can actually hold more than the contents from a single grow-container . . . 2 grow-containers of soil will actually fit, but this makes mixing in amendments very difficult and messy. . .
Now we proceed to give back to our soil mix what our plants have taken (and then some) . . . We get out our kelp meal, bone meal, alfalfa (or blood) meal, greensand, rock phosphate, diatomaceous earth, and dolomite lime and get mixing. . . Depending on the soil's condition this is also where we might add a little more pearlite if soil compaction looks to be a potential problem. . .
Folks are going to ask us how much of these different supplements we add, and the only honest answer we can give is - it depends! If the plants we'd raised previously in that particular container had shown any signs of being short on a major nutrient . . .it's not too hard to throw in an extra cup or two of the appropriate organic supplement . . .for example wed add extra Blood meal or alfalfa for N - Bone meal for P - kelp meal for K and other micro nutrients . . .
A nice full 16 oz plastic dixie cup of each of the prior mentioned ingredients would be our baseline for supplementing this round of soil re-mix. . . that actually equals a measurement of 2 cups (1 pint) . . . We will generally double this amount if any nutrient shortage has shown. . .
The greensand and rock phosphate are very slow to dissolve and be absorbed by plants, and are not normally used by many indoor container gardeners. . . Their slow release is what helps to make our system work . . . They will still be in our soil for the next couple of grows, doing their part for our soil health. . .
This is the point where we would also add some of our own compost assuming there is some finished and ready . . . if not some mushroom compost has proven to work . . . Our compost is made from the usual standards, household veggie food scraps and such . . . with the addition of all our used grow scraps. . . Fan leaf, chopped stems, and the "leftover's" from processing by bubble bag or tumbling are all composted and returned to the soil. . .
Now we will wet this whole mix down lightly and let it "cook" for a spell. . . We have a couple of large bins like this for soil remixing and composting. . . Folks always want us to be specific on amounts and times, and we do a lot of this by feel, so when we say we let the soil cook for a "spell" - how long depends on feel and need . . .
The minimum time our soil sits is two weeks . . . and it's sat waiting for use for a couple months like this during slower times or shut-downs in our grow . . . This time gives soil bacteria a chance to work and make the various organic amendments more quickly and easily available for our plants. . .
Now for the second grow . . . We use this soil again for another grow, watering with our usual array of teas, Earth Juice, etc. . . If needed, containers are top-dressed with compost (our own or mushroom compost depending on availability) as any soil settling occurs. . .
Upon yet another successful harvest . . the soil is reconditioned again . . . Once we reached our third mix of soil, we cut back on some of the soil amendments. . . The greensand and rock phosphate are still working from the last re-mix so we don't need to add any more of them for sure. . . .What remains in your soil at this point in terms of nitrogen and such may depend on your strain, some strains are much more greedy for some nutrients . . .
As an example of this technique . . . if our plants haven't shown any signs of yellowing as they mature, we figure there is nitrogen enough in the soil for the next round (at least to get started - we can add more N on the fly with fish ferts and teas if needed) . . and no alfalfa / blood meal would be added. . . If yellowing has occurred then a nitrogen supplement is added again. . . as weve gotten more adept at remixing our soils . . .
Just as a note about nitrogen sources . . . weve found that over time we can now judge better how much of the amendments to mix in from the beginning . . . and as weve increasingly switch from blood meal to alfalfa . . . weve found that we can add alfalfa meal with every soil remix . . .
Kelp meal is always added again since many of the major liquid organic ferts seem a little short on potassium, and also because we like the micro nutrients kelp meal provides to our plants. . . Dolomite lime will usually be necessary again too . . .and it's possible your soil will need even more lime this time than last. . . Any peat in the soil adds acidity as it decomposes, and the lime balances this as well as providing magnesium. . .
After the standard 15 - 30 days of standing moistened waiting for use this soil is used still another time. . . Now our soil has grown 4 crops of herbs and is still going and growing strong. . . At this point, we have started plants in our soil remixes directly alongside plants in fresh potting soil, just to make sure our mix wasn't subtly stunting our plants. . .
The result was that the plants grown in our 4th and 5th generation soil remix did far better than those directly alongside grown in fresh from the bag FoxFarm OceanForest potting soil!
Because our garden was designed to be a continuous harvest setup . . . once we are to our 4th or 5th remix, it's starting to get hard to keep track of exactly what soil has been remixed where . . since half used bins of remixes are often dumped together to make room for another round of used soil coming from the garden . . So from here we simply continue adding amendments by feel as needed. . . as weve already described . . .
This is how the three little birds use soil. . . We know we break the rule we have all been told to follow - to never reuse soil. . . Even those "radicals" we have seen reusing soil, have always described letting their soil go out to their flower beds after 3 or 4 grows. We decided to push the envelope and see how far we could take it . . .
We still haven't found a limit for the number of times we remix our soil, and our harvests and plant vigor keep improving. . .
Oh . . just to add another bit of heresy . . . folk who have checked out our picture gallery at CW may have noticed our container grows suspended above the floor on wheeled furniture movers. . . It's a very convenient way to keep the plants in larger containers mobile. . . but you also must realize then (if you think about it) that out grow containers have NO drainage. . .
Our soil mix . . . which now has been remixed double digit times . . . has NEVER been flushed!
one more thing we might add - we certainly would not remix soil from any containers where we'd had a bug or disease problem - even getting bud mold would be enough for us to say - no thanks to a soil remix . . . if disease or pests strike your soil it will need to be discarded . . . otherwise we're still reusing the same soils in 2004 we used in 2003 . . . and those were used in 2002 and 2001 and 2000 etc . . .
our methods may not be for everyone . . . and we strongly encourage folk to use a keen eye to watch and "listen" closely to their plants . . . when we open a container of our remixed soil after it's "composted" . . . it smells like fresh earth . . . and as long as that's the case we plan to keep using ours . . .
As a final note . . . we are proud to report that earthworms live in our soil remixes now. . . not the big fat nightcrawlers that many folks associate with the word "worm" . . . these are smaller red wigglers . . . our container gardens aren't ideal habitat for worms . . . they are really too shallow . . . so in many ways we are amazed that worms manage to live in our indoor garden . . . and we use fish ferts and earth juice ferts in fairly high concentrations . . . again we are a little amazed that worms tolerate this . . . but we've had plenty of worms (red wigglers) showing up in containers that had been through their entire bloom cycle as they were being remixed for recycling . . .
- Endless Soil Remixing with the 3LBS
We are about to go totally against the advice that Cervantes and Rosenthal and many others give concerning soil . . . the three_little_birds want to tell people that we ALWAYS re-use our soil . . . No soil has left the garden's of the three_little_birds since before the turn of the millennium . . .
we were discussing this among "the birds" the other nite - and one line that a little bird said comes to mind . . . "Farmer's don't strip their topsoil after a harvest - or even a few - in fact their soil is their most precious commodity - why should it be different for indoor gardening as long as proper care is taken to build healthy soil?"
Some experts will tell folks to throw out their soil after every grow . . . and we've known plenty of commercial growers that happily comply to make sure they do not have pest or nutrient problems. . . Maybe that even is the best solution for your grow, we can't say for sure, as always your mileage may vary. . .
We are poor simple medical users . . . and spending something like $20 for a bag of FoxFarm soil rubbed us wrong . . . our indoor herb grows have evolved to use 2'x3' containers . . . so with our container system it might take 2+ full bags of that soil for 3 plants in one of those containers . . . The three_little_birds wanted to save our money to purchase top quality genetics . . . not to buy simple dirt . . . so we decided there had to be a better way!
Now again . . . someone who is involved in commercial (rather than personal medical) production might not be so inclined to bother with making sure their soils stay healthy and all the work we go through to ensure our soil's health. . . but for us it is a labor of love and we feel our results speak for themselves. . . anyway, like we said . . our soil never leaves our grow . . . it has all been recycled to the point that we could not even begin to tell you how many times it's been through our system . . .
A good commercial potting mix has always been the base for our soil. . . We look for a product which is 100% organic . . . we recommend that you avoid ALL chemical salt ferts like the plague if you value your soil health . . . This especially includes timed-released chem ferts like osmocote . . .
Depending on what we have found for soil . . . we go from there. . . Some cheap organic soil mixes contain little more than peat, pearlite, and dolomite lime. . . These absolutely need amending to start off. . . Some organic soil mixes are much more complete and need little or no amending for starters. . .
Organic mushroom compost is certainly one of the hot soil mediums these days . . . and we've certainly had great success mixing it in with our soil remixes to add fresh organic matter. . . we often have top-dressed with fresh mushroom compost as well . . . after a couple years of experience with mushroom compost . . . weve found it to be a great source for an indoor soil base . . . and its proven to work well with remixes . . .
Now well walk you through a description of the soil building process . . . lets imagine we started with an already amended soil mix like FoxFarm Ocean Forest as the base . . . perhaps mixed � and � with mushroom compost and added perlite . . .
Once through it's first grow (the plants fed only 100% organic with earth juice, guano and alfalfa teas, fish ferts, and liquid kelp). . . our container of soil has it's root balls pulled and it is dumped into a very large rubbermaid container w/ a lid (50 gallon container is our standard) . . . These container's are longer than our 2x3 growing containers, so with 2 people lifting and dumping . . . it's not too hard to keep this step neat. . . Each bin can actually hold more than the contents from a single grow-container . . . 2 grow-containers of soil will actually fit, but this makes mixing in amendments very difficult and messy. . .
Now we proceed to give back to our soil mix what our plants have taken (and then some) . . . We get out our kelp meal, bone meal, alfalfa (or blood) meal, greensand, rock phosphate, diatomaceous earth, and dolomite lime and get mixing. . . Depending on the soil's condition this is also where we might add a little more pearlite if soil compaction looks to be a potential problem. . .
Folks are going to ask us how much of these different supplements we add, and the only honest answer we can give is - it depends! If the plants we'd raised previously in that particular container had shown any signs of being short on a major nutrient . . .it's not too hard to throw in an extra cup or two of the appropriate organic supplement . . .for example wed add extra Blood meal or alfalfa for N - Bone meal for P - kelp meal for K and other micro nutrients . . .
A nice full 16 oz plastic dixie cup of each of the prior mentioned ingredients would be our baseline for supplementing this round of soil re-mix. . . that actually equals a measurement of 2 cups (1 pint) . . . We will generally double this amount if any nutrient shortage has shown. . .
The greensand and rock phosphate are very slow to dissolve and be absorbed by plants, and are not normally used by many indoor container gardeners. . . Their slow release is what helps to make our system work . . . They will still be in our soil for the next couple of grows, doing their part for our soil health. . .
This is the point where we would also add some of our own compost assuming there is some finished and ready . . . if not some mushroom compost has proven to work . . . Our compost is made from the usual standards, household veggie food scraps and such . . . with the addition of all our used grow scraps. . . Fan leaf, chopped stems, and the "leftover's" from processing by bubble bag or tumbling are all composted and returned to the soil. . .
Now we will wet this whole mix down lightly and let it "cook" for a spell. . . We have a couple of large bins like this for soil remixing and composting. . . Folks always want us to be specific on amounts and times, and we do a lot of this by feel, so when we say we let the soil cook for a "spell" - how long depends on feel and need . . .
The minimum time our soil sits is two weeks . . . and it's sat waiting for use for a couple months like this during slower times or shut-downs in our grow . . . This time gives soil bacteria a chance to work and make the various organic amendments more quickly and easily available for our plants. . .
Now for the second grow . . . We use this soil again for another grow, watering with our usual array of teas, Earth Juice, etc. . . If needed, containers are top-dressed with compost (our own or mushroom compost depending on availability) as any soil settling occurs. . .
Upon yet another successful harvest . . the soil is reconditioned again . . . Once we reached our third mix of soil, we cut back on some of the soil amendments. . . The greensand and rock phosphate are still working from the last re-mix so we don't need to add any more of them for sure. . . .What remains in your soil at this point in terms of nitrogen and such may depend on your strain, some strains are much more greedy for some nutrients . . .
As an example of this technique . . . if our plants haven't shown any signs of yellowing as they mature, we figure there is nitrogen enough in the soil for the next round (at least to get started - we can add more N on the fly with fish ferts and teas if needed) . . and no alfalfa / blood meal would be added. . . If yellowing has occurred then a nitrogen supplement is added again. . . as weve gotten more adept at remixing our soils . . .
Just as a note about nitrogen sources . . . weve found that over time we can now judge better how much of the amendments to mix in from the beginning . . . and as weve increasingly switch from blood meal to alfalfa . . . weve found that we can add alfalfa meal with every soil remix . . .
Kelp meal is always added again since many of the major liquid organic ferts seem a little short on potassium, and also because we like the micro nutrients kelp meal provides to our plants. . . Dolomite lime will usually be necessary again too . . .and it's possible your soil will need even more lime this time than last. . . Any peat in the soil adds acidity as it decomposes, and the lime balances this as well as providing magnesium. . .
After the standard 15 - 30 days of standing moistened waiting for use this soil is used still another time. . . Now our soil has grown 4 crops of herbs and is still going and growing strong. . . At this point, we have started plants in our soil remixes directly alongside plants in fresh potting soil, just to make sure our mix wasn't subtly stunting our plants. . .
The result was that the plants grown in our 4th and 5th generation soil remix did far better than those directly alongside grown in fresh from the bag FoxFarm OceanForest potting soil!
Because our garden was designed to be a continuous harvest setup . . . once we are to our 4th or 5th remix, it's starting to get hard to keep track of exactly what soil has been remixed where . . since half used bins of remixes are often dumped together to make room for another round of used soil coming from the garden . . So from here we simply continue adding amendments by feel as needed. . . as weve already described . . .
This is how the three little birds use soil. . . We know we break the rule we have all been told to follow - to never reuse soil. . . Even those "radicals" we have seen reusing soil, have always described letting their soil go out to their flower beds after 3 or 4 grows. We decided to push the envelope and see how far we could take it . . .
We still haven't found a limit for the number of times we remix our soil, and our harvests and plant vigor keep improving. . .
Oh . . just to add another bit of heresy . . . folk who have checked out our picture gallery at CW may have noticed our container grows suspended above the floor on wheeled furniture movers. . . It's a very convenient way to keep the plants in larger containers mobile. . . but you also must realize then (if you think about it) that out grow containers have NO drainage. . .
Our soil mix . . . which now has been remixed double digit times . . . has NEVER been flushed!
one more thing we might add - we certainly would not remix soil from any containers where we'd had a bug or disease problem - even getting bud mold would be enough for us to say - no thanks to a soil remix . . . if disease or pests strike your soil it will need to be discarded . . . otherwise we're still reusing the same soils in 2004 we used in 2003 . . . and those were used in 2002 and 2001 and 2000 etc . . .
our methods may not be for everyone . . . and we strongly encourage folk to use a keen eye to watch and "listen" closely to their plants . . . when we open a container of our remixed soil after it's "composted" . . . it smells like fresh earth . . . and as long as that's the case we plan to keep using ours . . .
As a final note . . . we are proud to report that earthworms live in our soil remixes now. . . not the big fat nightcrawlers that many folks associate with the word "worm" . . . these are smaller red wigglers . . . our container gardens aren't ideal habitat for worms . . . they are really too shallow . . . so in many ways we are amazed that worms manage to live in our indoor garden . . . and we use fish ferts and earth juice ferts in fairly high concentrations . . . again we are a little amazed that worms tolerate this . . . but we've had plenty of worms (red wigglers) showing up in containers that had been through their entire bloom cycle as they were being remixed for recycling . . .
LT1RX7 Drifter
Active Member
^ lol they were alot of the reason i decides yrs ago to reuse soil
brewing up
Well-Known Member
i re-used soil and all my reg seeds were fem, i left the female roots in the soil, dont know if it helped or not though, my question is tho,,... can u use the same soil for all plants, like 1 big massive pot with a load of plants?? :-/
What about reusing last year's soil outdoors? My holes are still kinda full. lol. Can I just add some fresh soil to it and mix it up? Or do I need to just get rid of it, and get new bags? I got most of the roots out after harvest, when I was just messin around. Just wondering if it's possible? Would save me a lot of $ if it is.
My deal is im kind of tired of dropping $100 every other day for fox farm bags.
I got this:
Bag of blood meal
Bag of bone meal
Bag of dried kelp
Bag of rainbow mix grow.
I tossed in about 24oz of each into my 120 gallons of old soil.
I put in 120 gallons of soil (Small roots and all)
I mixed it all up by shovel and put back into my 5 gallon smart pots and planted all my mothers today.
I also fed at 200% or "Accelerated feeding"
Crossing fingers and saved $200 today!
I got this:
Bag of blood meal
Bag of bone meal
Bag of dried kelp
Bag of rainbow mix grow.
I tossed in about 24oz of each into my 120 gallons of old soil.
I put in 120 gallons of soil (Small roots and all)
I mixed it all up by shovel and put back into my 5 gallon smart pots and planted all my mothers today.
I also fed at 200% or "Accelerated feeding"
Crossing fingers and saved $200 today!
DSinatra
Well-Known Member
Let's revamp this thread huh?! So to reuse soil or not, that is the question. I don't really see a problem with it. I just mixed about 50 gallons of soil to find out they were all males. (Well the majority of them) so what am I to do waste all of that soil? Hell no. I don't see the problem if I'm feeding it. It just needs to serve it's purpose as a medium
