This is my first year that I am using EB's. I know it's kind of early, but what am I supposed to do with the used soil the EB's when the season is over with? Can I use it again next year? My concern is, well, although I use organic fertilizers, can I add 3 cups as before the second time around or I need to reduce the amount the second year since there could be some left-over fertilizers already in the soil? Or am I supposed to throw the used soil away and start with new potting soil?
Am I being a little anal here or what..
tmm
What to do with used soil from Earthbox
You can reuse the soil for at least 3-4 years. I too use organic fertilizer and have been growing in some of my EB's for 5 years adding fertilizer each year without any problems.
Rich
I don't use EBs, but I do container gardening. Can I reuse that soil too? I just dumped out my rectangular boxes, but I haven't thrown the soil away yet. Can I mix some new potting soil in with it and reuse it?
Pati
Thank you Rich.
Do you put the same amount of fertilizer the 2nd year as you do the 1st year?
You can reuse the soil used in any type of pot. I leave my filled pots out all winter so most of the roots left in the soil tend to decompose although sometimes its easier to dump it out, loosen it up and remove any root clumps and then put back in the pot. If the soil is extremely root bound I may mix it with 25% fresh potting mix after thoroughly breaking it up. I add the same amount of fertilizer every year and have been doing that ever since my bad back forced me to curtail my in ground planting.
Rich
Thank you so much, Rich. This is really good news. Buying so much new potting soil was really curtailing the number of containers I can have. Now I'm going to rescue the soil I dumped and refresh it!
Pati
I know what you mean patischell. I used to grow something on every square foot of land in my backyard and even dug up part of the lawn in my side yard (corner property) to plant more. When I finally figured out my back couldn't take it any longer and I switched to 75% container, 25% in ground, I must have bought at least 20 2 cu. ft. bags of potting mix the first year alone and that gets really expensive very fast. At least now with 14 EB's, 15 large self watering pots and God knows how many standard 12-16" pots I wind up using I get by purchasing maybe 3-4 bags a year even if I add (and I usually do) to my collection.
Rich
I had asked the same question to my colleague-gardener who takes care of a large estate in our office campus. What he said was very encouraging to me. He uses all the old potting soil for starting seeds in beds. This has the advantage of 'no weed seeds' in it.
Dinu
Rich,
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
Hearing it from the experienced with Earthboxes like yourself, I can now with confidence reuse the soil and just add fertilizer every year. This is great because, as others said, the potting soil can get very expensive. I am short and not so strong so I always end up buying more expensive smaller bags that I can actually lift and carry, intead of those economy size bags which are usually cheaper. But since I will be recycling the soil, I won't be as concerned about getting those little tiny bags of soil that cost a fortune.
tmm
With my EB's all I have to do is add a little fresh potting mix each season and of course fresh fertilizer after I scoop out the old fertilizer. For some mysterious reason there is always a slight shortage of mix each season. I grow mostly tomatos and therefore check my PH each time to make sure it reads at least 6.5 ... If much lower I add dolomitic lime.
I don't know about EB's but I reuse all my soil, if there's any question about "bugs or diseases" I just boil a large pot/s of water and pour it threw and make sure it is all steamy to cure it. Make sure it cools before you plant in it.Then I may add in fresh potting sil by 1/2. It sure saves a lot of money. The only thing that might cause a proble is if you are growing tomatoes or veggies that are prone to diesases.In that case you might want to use fresh soil for food crops.
I do this even with my African Violets and I can't think of a picker plant than those..lol
Hope that info helps.
MsC
Richh:
What brand of soil are you using in your EB's? I'm having a he** of a time finding something without added fertilizers.
Toni
Rich, Tplant:
One question, I completely agree with reusing the potting soil, but what happens if I grew tomatoes and then I want to use the same earthbox later in the season to grow sugar snap peas, carrots,radishes etc... tomatoes need dolomite lime and I don't think none of the plants mentioned needs it, so will the dolimite lime hurt the plant?
Toni, I have used over the years Jungle Growth, Pro Mix, a house brand from my local Frank's Nurseries store (they are now out of business) and over the past few years Miracle Grow (yes the one with the added fertilizer). To be honest I handle it like any other mix adding my organic fertilizer before planting and have noticed no difference in plant growth. That admittedly is a problem if you are growing 100% organically but if not the amount of fertilizer in the mix is very small, is timed release beads much like Osmocote and in a densly planted EB does not contribute much toward altering the fertilizer balance. Also after the first year it in effect has no added fertilizer as it has been used. Since I don't use the chemical fertilizer stripe method I really can't comment on what if any effect it has there. In my area finding anything without added fertilizer has become such a chore that I have basicall given up and just drive a half mile up the road and get the Miracle Grow.
Rich
carminator 1, that is sort of a Catch 22 isn't it. The dolomite is added to raise pH but more importantly to supply calcium which helps prevent blossom end rot. Dolomite is specified over hydrated lime because it reacts much more slowly with the soil supplying the calcium in sort of a timed release fashion. It also acts much more slowly in raising the soil pH though I really don't know what the final resulting pH from adding 2 cups of dolomite to the EB really is in time. I thought I read somewhere here that Tplant has taken pH mesaurements on his EB's and maybe if he reads this he could comment on that. I really only can come up with 3 choices.
Try one of your second crop choices in the EB soil as is. I can't imagine the soil pH being above 7.5 after adding the dolomite and some of your second crop choices may be perfectly happy with that.
Remove 25% to 50% of the soil for use elsewhere and replace with fresh.
Add some aluminum sulphate to lower pH. This is routinely used on acid loving plants such as blueberries. How much I really couldn't say but the label should give you a starting point.
I routinely double crop my EB's with lettuce to basil, summer squash or peppers, broccoli to the same, summer squash to raddichio but my growing season is not long enough for double cropping tomato EB's.
Rich
carminator1 --- I keep my PH at 6 . As far as the peppers are concerned I use the potting mix as is for peppers and don't add lime. I would use a fresh mix rather then to try adjust PH as that is a very time consuming process. It is far easier to raise PH than lower it.
This is my 1st year using EB's and I just got potting mix that has some fertilizers in it (all natural) since I couldn't find any without it. Then I added some more organic "all purpose" fertilizer in most of my EB's(3 cups). For tomatoes, I bought tomato-tone from totallytomato.com and used 3 cups of it. For strawberries, I added citrus type fertilizer (3 cups) I don't know how to check pH, etc and I am just too darn lazy to be precise in anything I do with gardening.
One thing I can tell you already is all the plants that are in EB's are bigger than the ones I have in other containers. For example, the zucchini leaves and stems in EB's are already twice as big as the ones I got in another container. I was picking ripe strawberries planted in EB's much before anything got ripen in my other container.
Pretty amazing huh.
tmm