When you have finished your grow and chopped down your pretty lady, what do you do with your root ball and dirt (assuming you are not hydro)?
I have been using my root balls and the left over dirt as refill on outdoor plants. I put in a garden, a lot of potted citrus trees, veggies, flowing plants, oleanders and so on, a couple years ago and now I am noticing some of the pots could us topping up with soil.
So, this is where my pots are being dumped.
My trim goes to my worms (I hope they enjoy all that green).
What do you do with the waste? Anything creative? Anything I can copy?
Normally i just throw mine in the woods or dirt pile but this year im thinking of making little grave sites for them. I dont know what else to really use the stems for lol. I make butter with the trim & attempting to make bubble hash this year
I consider trim to be all the sugar leaves and larfy flower that doesnt look appealing. Both have plenty of trichs on them and thc value so it doesnt go to waste and it taste like cannabis i guess is best way to put it lol after all its the trichs that get us stoned not the flower itself
If you leave the root ball with the main steam. Let it dry then trim up the roots a little. Then you can have a neat walking stick are wand.
A old hippie sold them here to tourists. He put crystals inside the root ball.
All the other waste, I feed to the worms in big trash cans. Then reuse the soil for next year.
Happy growing.
Thanks for that. In some comments I have to wonder what people consider trim.
I have a tote, regular type you normally find in a garage at home stuffed with Christmas decorations, that is literally overflowing with stuff I cut off the plants. Mainly big fan leaves, some stems where I trimmed the plant to ensure better light coverage, but mainly fan leaves.
Then I have an 8 quart Corelle casserole dish that is stuffed to the point where the lid is resting on the top of the ‘trim’ that I took off two plants when I harvested. This stuff is the darkish leaves that stick out of the buds and any sticky bits close in to the buds, but not flower materials.
I have been wondering if I should feed the worms all of it (embarrassingly spoiled for volume right now) or if I should invest in a nice bottle of a good oil and just letting them rest together in some vessel until I feel it is all infused. But, I have a ton of butter in the freezer…
Im not a huge fan of the butter i just make it cause family members enjoy it and tbh i dont know how to make anything else with it yet lol. If im successful at making bubble hash this year i believe thats the route im going until new ideas emerge.
An odd question, but I gotta ask, I am now in the southwestern U.S. and thus this will never work (too dry, you really have to work to keep things alive outside here), but up north when we threw out plants we thought were finished, not canna but any old house or garden plant, they often took root and surprised us by producing right in the middle of the compost pile.
Any sign of diehard plants coming back in your compost?
Yes actually i got daphadils growing in the pile and all i did was weed eat them down last year and tossed all yard debris in the pile and now flowers growing out of it
color me envious, I wanted to go hydro, but then I met someone who told me that due to our location I would need a device to keep the reservoir cool and those are pricy.
Easier for me to stick with dirt. Maybe if I only grow in the winter I could manage hydro
So, you have really cool rootballs at the end. I wanted one for my worms just to see if they would enjoy that. I need to grow one in hydro just so I can give the worms a treat.
considering all the products made from hemp fiber, I wonder if there is a business out there; recycling home grower’s roots and stems… I wonder how to process the stuff to make fibers…
Agreed lol. I want to use the soil for future grows but so far its been getting used for vegetables cause i wasnt sure how hot or weak it was and didnt want to fk plants up so used on tomatoe plants this year and i think it could use more nitrogen, tomatoes not as tall as last year so not sure if soil or shit rainey summer is fking with them or combination of both so hoping next year i can dial it in a little better and stop buying new soil every year
Yeah I have to use a water chiller and they are pricey but worth it imo. Once you get over the initial investment of a hydro system and everything it needs to run properly, the end results are worth the investment for me. I run ebb and flow system.
I am guessing, after all the nutrients pushed through the left over soil, that there isn’t much left. Any dirt left over probably won’t feed veggies too much. pretty stripped I would think
but it has been working ok to fill pots back up and absorb water…
sorry for your 'maters
If I can get a bit more organized, I want to increase my worm farm and try using more of their output next year, but I suspect I will be buying dirt again.
