Recycling Organic Soil

Still running the same soil but last year I started to run in to problems due to lack of runoff (my runoff worked its way up to 5000 TDS). So I took ALL my potting soil (9 years of use and reuse) and rinsed it thoroughly with rain water at 5ppm. About 15 gallons of water for every 5 gallon bucket of soil. That got my runoff down to about 800ppm (1:1 slurry test was about 350 ppm after an hour soak). From now on I will rinse them down to at least 1200 ppm after every cycle.

The idea was to flush out built up sodium (which tends to runoff readily) and to try and restore a more ideal nutrient balance. Also added some calmag via pulverized dolomite + oyster shell meal since I have been shy with the dolomite and Ive been using rain water which is only 5ppm TDS.

Once I had all the soil rinsed I re amended with LOTS of green leaves and grass clippings. Roughly 1:1 soil to greens by volume. Im trying to use more vegetative inputs rather than animal based, the idea being it should add calmag and keep nutrients more in balance with less runoff waste and less need for testing. I used golden rod flowers (with galls), sumac berries, sumac leaves, wild grape leaves, wild grapes, oriental bittersweet leaves, jewel weed, maple leaves, box elder leaves and basically anything green except I avoided using bittersweet nightshade, white snakeroot, pokeweed and virginia creeper since they are toxic or irritating for some people and I like to get my hands dirty. Not sure if that matters but I had plenty of non toxic plants to work with.

Stinging nettles can be composted and you can handle the compost with no problem once it rots down. I love getting weed seeds in the mix because they contribute to cover and nutrient cycling in the pots during use but they never get a chance to get out of hand. (Bugs are awesome, pill bugs and rove beetles, soil mites and spiders are all helpful. Soak the plant and the surface of the soil down with Neem oil to put a hurting on thrips and fungus gnats.

I let it cook in bins (summer temps 60-90F), watering it and turning it as needed and it was done in about 3-4weeks. Runoff was back up to 1500-2000 ppm and 1:1 slurry test was 800-1000 ppm after an hour soak.

Then I would mix that about 1:1 with more rinsed out soil and no problem planting clones directly into it, water-only through veg and early flowering.

If any plants faded/yellowed too early (3-4 weeks of flowering) I would make a green leaf slurry (chop up a bunch of green leaves with the mower) and let it soak in rain water for 12-36 hours (avoiding fermentation). I would adjust ppm to about 500 by diluting with rain water and then water it in. It also tends to get foamy if it soaks long enough making a great organic wetting agent.

Needless to say, it was a HUGE improvement. The ladies were able to feed much better and I was able to crank up the lights more. Much better yields and much better quality buds. I am still experimenting with the strength of the compost and the ratio of rinsed/amended. Right now it is about 1:1 resulting in some big fast growing plants.

I also switched from 5 gallon buckets to 7 gallon fabric pots because I noticed an amazing difference with a side by side of the Animal Pie. Same soil and same room but the cutting in the fabric pot had much larger trich heads, a cleaner finish (less dreading/finished faster) and slightly more yield.

Selected Animal Pie (In House Genetics - Animal Cookies x Cherry Pie)

The golden rod smells awesome and apparently the galls enhance the fertility. I feel like a weirdo going out there to collect them but if you can get access to some power lines or fields that are clean you will find lots of them this time of year.

Im just mixing in bins for now, great exercise and excuse to get outside and try to get some sun.

Here are some of the results from 1:1 slurry test with a Hanna ppm meter. I was surprised how low the numbers were for composted horse manure and forest EWC. I got them from the bottom of a forested slope under a crab apple tree. I suspect that the person who I got the horse manure from probably spread a lot of straw or bedding material which probably absorbed a lot of the nutrients from the manure? I didnt use the horse manure in my soil because I figured the horse was probably getting GMO/herbicide/BT grain along with the hay and or the hay grown on contaminated petrochem/herbicide fields?

Forest Earth Worm Castings - Instant 50ppm - 1 hour 75 ppm
Composted/Aged Horse Manure - Instant 150ppm - 1 hour 225ppm
Rinsed out used soil - Instant 250 ppm - 1 hour 385 ppm
Coast of Maine Lobster Compost - Instant 330 ppm - 1 hour 490 ppm
Homemade EWC - Instant 490- 1 hour 700 ppm
1:1 Rinsed out soil/greens - after composting 4 weeks - Instant 700 - 1 hour 950 ppm

I tend to agree with Josh from BoogieBrew, that organic growers can get some useful information from runoff and slurry ppm. He recommends the 9/11 rule, when your runoff gets down to 1100 ppm, water in ~900 ppm of ferts and then go water-only until it drops to 1100 again. I dont use bottled nutes but I use a 500ppm green leaf/compost slurry, fish hydrolysate and or blackstrap molasses when needed for a boost. My runoff ppm during flowering has been 1000-1500 ppm but I am still a bit low on fertility I think.

Random stuff

-Growstone went out of business and I am seriously missing the Growstone GS2 recycled glass for aeration. It is a lot stronger than perlite so it doesnt break down in recycled soil and its the perfect size and density. I have enough to add a bit here and there if needed and take care of business but without GS2 the next best thing is pumice which is kind of silly to have shipped to the east coast. I have been adding some pinecones, acorn shells and shagbark hickory shells but aeration is pretty good with the fabric pots anyway so if my aeration percentage decreases over time it may not matter as much?

-I forgot to mention, the soil mix I started with was made from peat, coco, FFOF bags of soil, Roots Organic bags of soil, granular diatomaceous earth, homemade EWC and organic compost, lots of kelp meal, azomite, alfalfa meal, organic chicken manure, fruit bat guano, leaf mold, insectivorous bat pellets, greensand, coast of main lobster compost, crab shell meal, oyster shell meal, gypsum, dolomite lime, fish bone meal, neem seed meal. I know we don't need all that stuff but I figure diversity is one of the few things you can gift to a good soil.

-I got lucky and found a porcupine den with a huge mound of scat and humus under it. The scat smells sweet almost like honey, makes a great amendment like rabbit pellets. If you can find a bat roost, their droppings are partially digested inset frass, awesome stuff and it piles up under their home.


-This may be sacrilege but I dont bother too much with microbial tea, aerated nutrient teas, myko or bokashi etc. When I do bother, I use Microbemans recipe and just brew a liter or 2. I figure when you are dealing with recycled soil you have constant microbial activity and it is amazing how fast the greens break down from cold composting. If I have some composted or cooked soil sitting around too long I will add a few greens to it to wake it up. Once I get into a groove with the new soil I will experiment again with Mykos and microbial tea tho.

-I dont love having worms in my bins because it slows me down so much. I feel bad chopping them up so I pick around them. So I just keep one worm bin going to day I did and collect some ambrosia once in awhile.

-During the grow I have been trying to cover with brown-type leaf material to reduce evaporation from the circulation fans on the soil surface. My fabric pots tend to dry out and it can be time consuming to get get them to drink evenly. I figure green cover might be a bad idea, possibly encouraging bud rot and or fungus gnats? I have some yucca wetting agent but they still seem to not take water evenly. Maybe I just water too fast?

-I got a 40 lb bag of Down to Earth Neem Seed Meal to topdress with because Neem Oil stomped out my fungus gnat problems and I get thrips which can be somewhat destructive.

I like your resourcefulness, why buy it grows under our noses, insert dandelions here and make lab compost with it.

If your ppm is too high another option is to use gypsum, it is supposed to remediate salty soils. Really cheap too buy it at a hardware store.

I would like to make 3 recommendation to help alleviate some of your issues. Concerning growstone use pumice stone, it lasts longer then perlite. And good call on the Neem Seed meal. I like to use that with some kelp meal.

1st: European Night-crawlers. Get yourself a pound of them. Split them up among your pots. 3 things happen with this. First you get some ewc put right in the soil. 2nd and more importantly the worms will keep your soil nice and aerated. You will see a big improvement in the soil after a few weeks in drainage. By doing this it will help to make sure you get a even wet in your soil with no dry spots. 3rd, they will improve how quickly your root ball will break down. If your worried about hurting the worms pull some rotting food out the worm bin and put in the pot on the far side, the worms will go to it and let you do your thing after 10 min or so. Or Do as Ive always done, forget they're in there and do what you want. cutting a worm in half normally equals 2 worms lol

2nd: You want to make sure that every time you harvest all the leaves, stems ect from harvest get put right back in that pot. Cover with a light layer of ewc and then wet it down and cover it for a few months. That gets your green back into your soil. This is a must if you don't want to do teas and shit. (i only ever watered using this). Id upgrade those pots to 10 gallon.

3rd: Micro-clover/Dutch white clover. So you uncover your pots a month or 2 and your planning on using them in the next month. First things first, get that clover seeded in. Use a nursery pot to cover a little spot so you can easily xplant your strain in a month. But use that next month to grow a big patch of clover. Now for the why. Evaporation and the rhizosphere of the soil structure. That clover will make a wonderful environment to xfere nitrogen from one plant(clover) to another plant (cannabis). DIRECTLY. I barely use any EWC through out the grow due to the level of nitrogen being produced by the Clover. in 25 gallon pots i was green all the way to the last 2 weeks of bloom and they started to yellow a bit. No teas, no ewc, no top dressing. just trim the clover back and keep the trimmings on top. Easy.

To address a few things you asked about. Bignutes is right Gypsum. If free lime is present in the soil, it can be dissolved by applying sulfur or sulfuric acid. Sulfur products reduce the pH which dissolves the lime, thus freeing up the calcium. If free lime or gypsum is not present in adequate amounts as determined by a soil test, then add calcium.

IMO never bring outside, inside. You never know what you may be introducing to your controlled environment (or your house). Outdoor stuff is too chaotic to chance on for my girl. again just my personal opinion. I know you were looking at the Den for humus but Id say your worm bin is the right way to go imo. its indoors, controlled and you can get ALOT from it once your colony is up and going.

If you would like to see this in action check out my Vertical No Till grow Journal in my sig.

Lots of great advice thank you growers! I did get a bag of gypsum and have been adding a bit to each watering. I see a lot of calcium issues and have been gradually able to crank up the lights. The ladies are getting big, about 3 weeks

SupraSPL said:

Still running the same soil but last year I started to run in to problems due to lack of runoff (my runoff worked its way up to 5000 TDS). So I took ALL my potting soil (9 years of use and reuse)

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Holy fuck dude, that is amazing. Your work looks incredible, to say the least.

Saw you're trying no-till now, new development? I haven't recycled soil in almost 7 years now, but the longest no-till I've had before having to recycle was 3 years. If I had to guess, you experienced the same issue I (and everyone else does) did in no-till. Eventually, you're left with nothing but compost and your aeration input. I would imagine that the consistent recycling of the soil delayed the composition process.

By keeping them in the same pots, you'd have all of the original microbiology inside.

Think of it this way, compare no-till and ROLS to that of building a city.

In ROLS, the citizens just get their start, build a decent sized town, then have to start over again each recycling.

In No-till, the decent sized town never gets destroyed and ends up turning into a full blown metropolis.

Thanks man! I did try no till once and it did actually work. 3 years before recycling I love the sound of that ! I will start experimenting/studying that again because it makes a ton of sense and I like the way you describe it. I am sure I would see a lot more beneficial insect activity and worms etc if I were to go with larger fabric pots and no till approach.

This is a great example of a larger scale no till it is truly awesome

Room2 at 38 days. Turned the lights up to full blast and the ladies are fading now but fattened up nice and they are putting on the frosting. Im going to keep them on full blast as the fan leaves drop off and then turn them down during the last 10 days probably. Ive been getting 1.05 to 1.2 gpw but hoping I can do a little better than that this run. I checked PPFD in the canopy with an Apogee SQ-120 it is ranging from 400-1000 PPFD.

There are 4 gorilla glue, 3 Kandy Kush, 1 Blue Dream, 2 Alien Moonshine, 1 Animal Pie, 1 Blue Cheese packed in there, all in 7 gallon fabric pots.

SupraSPL said:

Selected Animal Pie (In House Genetics - Animal Cookies x Cherry Pie)
View attachment 4695471

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Looks fire dude!