reusing soil with left over roots??

[MrPuffAlot]

I repotted a female into a now deceased Male's pot using the male's soil.

its impossible to pick out all the left over roots from the male.

So I just pulled out the male, dug a hole and put the female in.

How will the dead root in the soil effect it?? Like, nutritional and ph wise?
any idea?? I assume it would be a natural source of Nitrogen.

and if there is a negative effect, is there anything i can add to the soil
to take care of the left over rootage??

thanks

[HippyInEngland]

The dead roots will rot, causing possible root rot of the new plant

[MrPuffAlot]

wonderful..

now what??

anything i can add to the soil

[HippyInEngland]

Personally if it were me and I could not get any more soil, I would have tipped the pot with the dead roots into a bucket and 1/4 fill it with water, wash the soil and the dead plants roots would come away easily, then simply pour the whole lot of water plus soil back in the grow pot and let the water drain out of the bottom of the pot and you end up with root free soil again.

[That crazy vancouver guy]

there's a few reasons why you shouldn't reuse your soil like that... it it not impossible ... I do it myself... and I'll get into that, but I wouldn't recommend you doing so in that fasion, and I'll tell ya why...

k... as mentioned, the "fresh" old roots will give you problems for a couple of reasons... they have been working within the medium for the plant and as a result, there will be a salt buildup around them in the medium. As they decompose, they will flucuate the ph within the soil. root rot spreading to your health plant is also a possibility, as mentioned.

it's just not a wise thing to just pull a plant and simply stick another in it's place.

to reuse the soil there are a couple things you could do...

obviously first you'd try to remove as much of the old root system as possible... simply shake the soil off the bone-dry rootball.
then I would just mix the old soil in with some new stuff after it had been flushed to remove any buildup of anything suspended within it.

that's what I've done with my old soil when funds were low and I couldn't afford to keep using fresh stuff.... but only if I have to...I've used it to start seedlings, and do some first transplants... but transplanting into final pots for flowering, it is recommended that only fresh medium is used.... JMO

yer best bet is to just use fresh, uncontaminaited soil, but it does not become useless.

the best thing to do with the used soil is to add it to the outdoor compost pile to be used outdoors in the garden.

us potheads are the most ecofriendly people on the planet....:cool:

[screwdriver]

There are probably more microscopic reasons to reuse your soil than not to.
I wouldn't worry about.