Reusing old soil

I turned off the water to my improvised rain gutter grow system a couple weeks ago and let the pepper and tomato plants die. They have dried out enough for me to get started getting the old soil out of the grow bags.


Since I'm always running low on soil storage {that other garden gets all the goodies, like trash cans and big pots} I put some of the old soil to my collards. They were looking a little peaked anyway.



I'm undecided on what to do with the rest of the soil. Leaning towards just scattering it in the garden and tilling it in. Do you guys reuse your old soil? What kinds of amendments do you add?

Thanks for looking in,

Larry

I just dump it on the compost pile.

Earth worm castings.kelp meal.
Alfalafa meal. Guanos high in N and P
Azomite. Greensand
Dolo lime
Gypsum
Soft rock phosphate
Epsom salts.

VTMi'kmaq said:

Earth worm castings.kelp meal.
Alfalafa meal. Guanos high in N and P
Azomite. Greensand
Dolo lime
Gypsum
Soft rock phosphate
Epsom salts.

Click to expand...

I used lime, gypsum, Epson salts and worm castings in the original mix. Also coffee grounds, blood meal and bone meal. My BIL raises chickens, so I have access to some chicken manure compost, but you have to use caution with it. I have a really big garden, so I try to get by on the cheap when I can. 50% of my mix is mushroom compost. It's $20 a scoop {just under a cubic yard} so I use more of it than most people recommend. The other 50% is peat moss, potting soil and Black Kow cow manure compost. And for the ones not going in the RGGS, I add lava rock to help with water retention.

I filled a kiddie pool halfway with the used soil, then added an equal amount of the new tomato mix. A couple three days ago I planted Acorn squash, pepper plants and Cilantro in it. We had a big thunderstorm that night, but nothing washed away. I'll add a few tomato plants, hopefully before the Acorn squash go crazy.

Check the rols thread in organics. Everything you will need to know about reusing your soil

Compost it, best way to reuse it. Unless you have some amendments laying around and want to reuse it as potting soil after a few weeks

As long as there's no problems i.e. Thrips
I usually mix the old soil in w new at about 1/4 old 1/4 peat moss and the rest new potting soil. It's been working pretty good for a while. If there's too much of the old soil it goes in the compost pile and gets used to side dress my garden plants.