This is something you dont see every day, a topic for soil growers only. On the pro's and con's list i did when i first started growing i didnt put in the cons side the waste soil that is produced nor did i think about how to get rid of this waste in large amounts . At the moment im paranoid about putting my used soil in the bins (for those in the uk, i dont trust the green bin scheme) and im even worse at taking it out of the house and taking it somewhere. So i guess my long drawn out question is how do you guys get rid of your used soil? Ciao. Spud.
I would: A) put the soil in black trash bags and just throw it away. B) find some forest and drive your soil there and dump it. C) Bring it to your local nursery and ask them where to get rid of soil. I doubt u can tell what kind of plant was growing with just the root system and a small stalk.
Its soil, gotta be one of the easiest things to get rid of ever concidering this earth is in abundance of it. You could throw that crap in a stream and say "GAWN!" Like old james.
A better idea... Instead of all this messing about with pots, construct a good sized flower bed (increased yields and potency, right off the bat), fill it, and then keep the soil alive. Don't throw it out, ammend it every season, instead. Keep on using it. Do farmers throw away their top-soil every year? No. -mu
Hey thanks to you lot that replied. UKCHRONICGROWER, you must know the paranoia every uk growers going through at the moment, just the busts having been gettin closer and closer to my gaff. Paranoia will kill me one day if i continue to grow but i think im probably just a little on the cautious side at the mo and i keep meeting new hurdles that needs stealth action! Cannabalistix and Anony, I will go for a drive tonight and throw my shit into the river, seems like a decent way of dumping my waste. -Mu, id like to know more about the active soil shit you was rambling on about, Do you know any websites/threads with info? Ill catch ya all soon. Stud (i got laid last night so no way can i be spud today)lol
I gave a clue in my last post; the question about farmers and their topsoil is a paraphrase of a classic 3LB quote. I have a lot to say about soil, but rather than go off on one (again), here's a copy of a 3LB article originally posted on OG some years back, which y'all might find interesting... When I decided to move my growing indoors, I found the 3LB stuff to be both informative and inspirational, and bang-on-the-nail, imho. I've spoken to a lot of growers and farmers about this over the last few months, and everything 3LB says rings true. Soil is ALIVE. Spending all that time and care building a powerful, diverse micro-herd and then throwing it all away, looks like insanty to me. And anyway, if I chucked my soil in the river, all the worms would drown! -mu
I know this is way late, but I've been reading up on organic grows and Mu you've got me interested. You said in another post you have approx 200L for an indoor flower bed to grow. This allows you to have a miniature ecosystem with instects and fungus galore. I like the sound of this. My question is this: I'm working out of a closet. Can I do this in a closet? Just one ginormous tub o' stuff? Also, how do you flush your plants at the end of flowering? Do you have some sort of an overfill drainage system or something? That's about 50 gallons or so? How many plants do you grow in there and how big of a space is that? Thanks for your help! Cap
And this is way later! ... Cap-N-Krunch, kudos for reading and referring to my "other posts", good work! I probably wouldn't have dug this up after so long if you hadn't gone to such trouble. Though, I might have. You could do it anywhere. A closet sounds great. So long as you have, say 7.5" of soil in there, yjust make it as big as possible. Nope. I have no drainage whatsoever. After a while you get a pretty good handle on the volume of water the thing takes (15-22L/week), and I also recently got a moisture meter - very handy. I also don't "flush" at the end of flowering. Though the compost teas get more diluted towards the end, and perhaps the final watering might be just water. Bottom line is, if you are growing 100% deep organic, there's nothing to wash out; the soil is a storehouse of *potential* nutrition, not a "medium filled with nutrients". When the plants don't need any more stuff, they'll stop asking the soil for it (i.e. stop sending complex sugar messages to the soil bacteria). Anyway, the taste is so good, I'm not about to start messing with that. Size-wise, my flower bed is just over three feet, by two and a half. Number of plants depends on how long you veg them. The first time around, I had six plants in there, the recent harvest (last night!) was just three plants, but the screen was well filled - they had been vegging for almost six weeks. You could put a dozen smaller plants in there easily, or fill the screen with just one plant. Everything I do is timed around harvesting for the correct Moon phase, so I judge the number of plants to put in there, by how long before I switch them to flower. My next batch will go ten weeks in flower, so I'm looking to switch them at the next new moon. But as that's less than 11 days away, I'll likely plant only two or three plants, and let them veg for five weeks, catch the next new moon. If I was in a hurry, I could drop six clones in there tomorrow, veg them for 9 days, and then go 12/12 on the 11th, but I'm not. -mu