Do you do any of your own composting, or recycling of your plant matter in your ROLS? I just started doing this, looking to bump up my organic matter for cheap, and was wondering if you had experience doing that.
I do this regularly. Matter of fact, I have four SIPS in my flower tent waiting for plants while the insects and micros break down the brown tree leaves and green cannabis leaves. I have also used fresh alfalfa. I keep all such amendments in larger chunks to help with aeration (full leaves, alfalfa cut to two- to four-inch pieces). I typically add some homemade compost to recharge bugs and micros. Occasionally I throw in some perlite. Overflow goes into my inside compost bin for uppotting. I topdress as needed with a 4-4-4 or 2-5-3.
I rarely see a conversation about leaching soil after a few grows. In my experience I find the need to leach every 3 or 4 grows. I went 5 years re amending, about 15 grows with the same soil before sending out a soil sample for testing and it had excessive amounts of sulfur and calcium. Could be from repeated additions of dolomite lime and peat moss IDK. PH was in the good range for soil, I have the soil test somewhere. The grow in my signature was excellent and it was one of the last grows with that soil before things started going south.