Removing roots in recycled coco media

I like to reuse whatever I can in my garden, saves money and saves the planet. One important step for reusing your coco media is to remove as much root material from the media as possible. When I have skipped this step in the past my grows suffered. Lately I’m trying to improve my results or at least keep results consistent with reused coco and have experimented with a few way to accomplish better root separation. You never can get all of it but you can get most of it out of the media. First attempts at dry removal were not at all promising. The rootballs were too tight to allow the media to be shaken off and breaking the roots by hand made shorter fibers which are harder to remove. My best method so far has been to wash the coco off of the roots with a hose into a large container of water like a washtub or something similar. This process needs a lot of water in the container so the coco is in a thin slurry. Washing the coco from the roots keeps root fibers longer and easier to separate. Next, rake out the roots that break off into the coco with a 12mm wire mesh or something similar. A small rake works too so anything the roots can wrap around is good.

Using a raking motion the stringy roots wrap around the wire mesh. 

The vast majority of the removed material is old roots.

Rake, shake, and repeat until you are happy with the end product and then drain the coco. The end product is ready for washing and re-buffering now without the majority of those old roots.

Some growers only use coco once, some reuse it. Maybe some growers have their own processes for reusing their coco that they would like to share as well.