Pictorial...How to clean Coco, Perlite, Geolite.

[El Gato]

Even if ya just threw it on ya grass lightly so it spreads around. I always have room in my garden for coco.

[Cerberus]

I use a coco and perlite and reuse the medium 2 or 3 times... generally adding a bit of new mix to the old, after that the coco breaks down a bit too much so I separate out the perlite for reuse and add the coco into the veggy garden. Raised beds means there is always room for a bit more coco.

 

 

Thanks for the tips Lou Lou

Edited March 23, 2012 by Cerberus

[acedaces 23]

Thanks for this hanky

[Syb3 rm3nt41_%20]

Decent, screening it would be handy i usually just break it down with my hands ..... also is very wise to advise people to innoculate the medium with beneficial bacteria before re-use .... if you bought shit coco it will be much better 2nd time round' when innoculated ... . ...

 

peace'

[ants]

I met a guy talking about the 'old days' when he would bag it up and send it to the rubbish tip. Ballsy hah

[louise]

Ballsy... nah, in the olden days the coppers didn't come round at 3 am to see what people have put out for the garbos and the local council didn't do checks to see if people were using their garbage, greenwaste and recycling bins appropriately... used to be, a person's rubbish bins were private.

Edited May 23, 2013 by louise

[DoctorWho]

Today I thought I was a genius by coming up with essentially the same method as this one.  I even took pics and all   Oh well, looks like the original ones in this thread are gone so I'm sure my pics will help someone one day.

 

I started off with just a mini greenhouse minus the clear dome

 

Put my used coco/perlite in there.  I found half filling it best as you have to be more careful with larger loads and it takes too long with smaller ones.

 

After 10 seconds of shaking it back and forth (top and then bottom trays)

 

After emptying the cleaned coco into a pot I shook the trays for another 10-15 seconds which balled the roots up on top of the perlite in the upper tray making it super easy to remove most of them.

 

Some roots remained so I moved all the perlite to one end, held the trays on a 30-ish degree angle and shook it back and forth very fast trying to make the tray bounce the medium inside it.  The perlite flew off the majority of the roots allowing them to clump together.

 

A bunch of roots made it into the bottom tray but moving everything up to one end and shaking like before releases most of the medium leaving the roots behind for removal.

 

The end product

 

I smashed through the recycling using that method.  I was getting well over 90% of the roots out and doing it at over 1L a minute as I went through an overflowing 60L res in under an hour.  It was the fastest and easiest method I have used by far and makes me really wish I saw this thread years ago

[The Hash Nibbler]

I just dump Multizyme in my pots when I finish.... enzymes eat dead roots, pull out main stem , and the rest, put multi in, cover with plastic bag and let it do its thing for a few weeks.

 

Peace. Nibbler.

[thc24]

I'm a fan of enzymes for cleaning up wheel borrows of coco. After itsvbeen saved in a burnings round sand and stone sive like u would use when laying a fresh lawn tho most of the rooysnwill come out dry in soon piece when dry. It is only used on cuttings and in the garden so no real need for a scarid fly drench. There seems to because few products around that will 're buffer ur cal mag and phone.

[Frank Reynolds]

Afaik enzymes don't break down the cellulose in the roots completely, jsut breaks it down to less complicated chemical chains. Something like Trichoderma will completely eat everything, a mix of enzymes + trichoderma = very quick eating big roots are all gone from my reused coco, just been sitting in the garage for a few months