So… I have a 5gal pot with Kind/FFOF soil in it from my first grow along with the stump of my first plant. Questions, anyone done this before? Do I need to remove remnants of old plant or can I just plant new grow right into it with the old roots and stump? I did a PPM test to see if there was any nutrients left in soil and got a reading of 3150ppm. Seems like there is a good amount of nutrients still left. Would love to hear from anyone who has done or tried this.
You can reuse the soil, but PH may be an issue. Coco is typically reused, because there’s such a fast drainage, and it’s a soilless medium, it just takes a quick flush to reset ph. Soil has buffers in it, and it likes to “hold” onto whatever ph it is.
Yeah didn’t think to test PH was just thinking if it still has nutrients it might bi viable.
Might want to pull the old roots also, just to make sure there’s no interference and they’re not encouraging root rot in the new plant.
Might not be an issue, but it would only take a couple minutes to make sure it won’t be an issue.
I reuse the same soil for years. You just have to start feeding nutrients pretty fast. I use strictly FFOF.
Thanks @MrPeat @AloysiusDevadanderAbercrombie. I’ve read that I need to remove root ball and top dress with compost and worm castings also some mycorrhizae when planting new plant.
I do it all the time. Use a sharp knife to cut the roots and pull the stump. Use the same knife to chop the soil up a bit to loosen it off and pull any obvious roots out. After I’ve transplanted I add a little biozym and that helps break down anything that’s left in there, makes the old stuff available to the new tenant
Nice! Great info thanks dude!
Anytime mate
What is no till in a pot? Who tills a pot of soil? Just a question? I dont mean to be rude, Im jusy really curious about how this is even a thing?
Never thought of it that way. Ok so basically I want to re use my soil because I’m a cheap (insert sophomoric humor here) grower.
Yeah, unless its toxic for some reason? The best thing to do is treat it like hydro soil, dump that pot out and clean the useless rootball out of it medium. All decomposing material robs Nitrogen in the process, not a big deal in a garden with worms and bio but not ideal in a pot. Obviously, the plant consumed a large portion of the material to make itself. Think of Star Trek we and plants are carbon based life forms. The chemical processes that take place utilize this carbon and places it into the plant. When we organic growers do a chop and drop, what are are really doing is trying to put as much of that carbon back into the soil as possible. However, its best if done from the top down in an active garden so as not to rob nitrogen. Worms, sunlight, water and other processes will break it down from the underside etc. In a compost pile you can bury it with more carbon based life forms.
If you are using bottled nutrients like FF or GA trio, it is prettt much a soiless hydro grow anyway.
Exactly.
Seems pretty high.
Typically one can just amend their soil when following the food/soil/no till methods. But no til in a 5 gal pot is kind of pointless. At that point it’s just a living soil.
For larger shared beds one just leaves the rootball, re amends, replants, and continues.
a true no till would utilize the rotting roots as food for the web.
Bokashi helps speed the breakdown of roots.
But, according to smarter people than me, a no till should only be done with a 15 gallon pot minimum size.