One thing that I did to my recycled mix, is rinse it in a cal-mag solution. I do that to my coco to begin with. It did rinse out a lot of the fines. So far no hydrophobic issues.
Let me get this straight…a soil manufacturer recommends new soil every year?
Go Figure…
Actually I go new every year for the ladies (2 bags Fox OF/ 1 bag VermiFire) mix.
With a core of OF so the seedlings don’t hit the fire for a few weeks (20-40g Bags).
I rotate the old soil into the raised beds, veggies don’t seem to mind.
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ONE of the replies came from a soil manufacturer, but if you had read it, the second and more detailed position is outlined by a personal friend who happens to be a soil scientist. He has nothing to gain from what he tells me. The supplementation with mycorrhizae hastened the demise of the soil by further clogging it up with dead hyphae. So if you supplement with mycorrhizae, I would follow directions and change the soil. BUT I’m working on the answer; the use of a substrate without soil, a 70/30 blend of coco coir and perlite. Then I can add what I want and flush it all out at the end of the season. Best of both worlds!!
You mention Coco not soil so you have nothing to worry about. NO MATTER what the substrate, I think a thorough rinsing, flushing is necessary at the end of each season now. I don’t want any useless leftovers clogging up my pores. Looking forward to a fresh start next year. I do have one Bruce Banner Fast in brand new soil that is growing fine. It helped to restore my sanity after losing 56 germinated seeds this season to clogging hypophilia.
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I have thought about you and your problem a lot. Have you ever tried making your own mix.? Rather than amending the FF OF. It sounds like you were close to making your own mix with all the drainage amendments anyway.
What I mean is at the end of the season I dump all my pots into my raised beds and all winter I amend it with char and homemade table scrap compost. Then in the spring before planting I fill all my pots first with the garden mix love. I do not get bagged soil for initial planting unless I get a gift cut randomly mid season or need to top some pots. I have done this for 16years in a row to these particular raised beds and never had anything close to like what you experienced. My native soil is hard glacial deposit clay with occasional palm sized rock. I love hitting the clay bed so I can back mix it into my grow soil. My grow soil is about 4’ deep in most places now.
You could try something like this for science sake. Do you have any other garden beds without the clay affliction? You could try 1 pot at the end of this season and mix it into the garden. Add whatever leaves table scraps and coffee grounds you have randomly around. And a few handfuls of the worst example of your clumping clay old FF OF. Mix it all in. Then see how it is/looks in the spring and then actually grow in it.
Sorry I am having a hard time organizing this (my thoughts) in a sensible way. I cannot help but going back to the fact that clay (small particle) soils are some of the richest for growing once you get past the water clog properties of clay. Everything broken down into small particles makes it easy for plants to pick up what it needs, especially for trace minerals. It seems to me that your problem at some point could be a benefit again as a rich source for minerals and nutrients. And maybe not have to $$ soil for you 5gal buckets.
Or if your are using coco now, for science. Try adding a 50% mix to one of your worst old soil piles. Then a 25% coco mix to another. Put a tomatoe in it if you don’t want to waste a seed or clone. See if that helps. Even coco breaks down like peat in a few years.
I wonder if your soil has a abnormally high level of trichoderma in it.? It is great at breaking down organic molecules. Especially all the fungal hyphae you mentioned. That is not the usual even with multiple applications of mycoboost. I read a story about when it was first identified (trichoderma) by us soldiers in ww2. Their waxed canvas tents started melting and falling apart in the rain after 3 days. They discovered the soil there was unusually high in trichoderma. And what trichoderma fungi are.
Anyway, that would not be the last word for me. Buying new soil every year. Maybe for next year, but there has to be a way around your problem. I feel so bad for you I would gladly give you fresh clones if you were close enough.
Do worms avoid the sticky clay soil? Have you ever tried larger wood chips? Or char? You could easily mix them into the pile of “useless” soil. Let it age a year and see if it resolves? Or in a pot or 2 for science. Sorry to ramble but I would have at least 4 short term and 4 long term experiments going in pots to see if a 25-50% blend of coco or chips or char would help with the drainage. Hell I would even try marbles or pea gravel too. Go big on drains then mix finer.
I would love to see an up close look at your worst soil example if you are willing to post a pic.? I am so intrigued by your problem.
If anyone builds compost you are making topsoil just like mother nature
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That statement will sell a lot of soil for them or not personally thanks for the warnings on ff I won’t buy it
Buying soil every year is bullshit i have soil that i recharge and I’ve been using for 7 years when you work your soil you lose all the fines by working with it
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I believe the major issue with my soil was THATCHING. This was the result of turning the soil with a rake to expose it to the sun for disinfection. This broke the “soil” into fine a fine particulate that now will no longer drain properly. The suggestion to replace soil each year came from the soil supplier, so I take that with some reserve. I understand how soil can be depleted and how to re-charge it, my mistake came from the raking it over and over in the sun, when the first round of seedlings this season failed. That means I don’t know what caused the first round of failures, yet the soil will not drain properly any longer. In fact, not at all. Water fill to the top and spills over when trying to flush it. I think we all need to be careful with our old soil so as to not chop it into dust while re-charging. All plants failed this year (56) leaving a few runts for the effort. I also planted an auto when I knew it was too late to start over this season with photo periord plants in August. In brand new soil it only grew to about a foot in height when I chopped it last weekend. Yeilding less than an ounce and after 13 weeks still clear/white tricomes I am not impressed. I seems to me that this plant needed more sun and heat than it got even though I’m Southern CA. Growing seems to become more difficult with time. Why is that?
Can you give me the balance of your mix by percentage? I want to change to this type of soil using sphagnum peat moss as the professor suggested along with coco-coir and perlite then adding in the fertilizing agents each year. It seem this would drain well and last for some time.
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Sure @Gdub Gary! It’s a standard potting mix ratio:
70% Peat
20% Compost
10% Aeration
If you’re using sphagnum peat, it’s pH is too low and needs to be adjusted with lime. So I prefer coco coir, which naturally has the right pH. But, it must be buffered with Cal-Mag, so I guess it’s a trade-off.
For the compost, I like worm castings, but any good finished compost will do. Some people prefer closer to 50/50 compost to peat if the container is outdoors, but I’ve heard (but not read myself) about studies that have shown that the plant won’t benefit too much more over about 20% compost. It’s thought beyond that point you start to sacrifice some drainage ability and aeration, and so you start to see diminishing returns after that.
I prefer to mix in organic dry fertilizer amendments rather than use bottled fertilizers, but either would work.
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I have a mix im trying now we see how it goes. its doing really well so far
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$300 per ounce of flower at my local dispensary. That’ll buy a lot of quality soil at the local garden center.
I bury vegan table scraps in my garden all year long to feed the worms. As long as worms are in the soil, they keep it aerated, fertilized and pH balanced. I throw in some cow shit in the fall, the worms love that. I grow lettuce in potting soil in window boxes, that all goes into the garden beds at the end of the season, along with the shredded maple leaves that I use for mulch during the growing season. But whatever I do, the worms are my barometer. If they are happy, my plants are happy. Despite a very rainy summer, I filled the freezer with peppers, tomatoes, parsnips, eggplants and green beans, along with a good supply of reefer.
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That’s the way my compost is except i use chicken manure,sand,clay from creek and trying something different for my carbon im getting old rotten wood that you can crumble up with your hands
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When I built my raised beds, I buried a layer of maple sticks as the bottom layer.
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You want to put twigs down then leafs then the grass clippings on top of that food waste then add some soil on top the grass clippings will start breaking it down
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I put all of my material through a mulcher to help break down into smaller pieces it helps with the breaking down the leaves that are falling now I put in a pile for next spring i will pull from the bottom where the breaking down is going on and send them through a mulcher along with rotting wood
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