STERILIZING SOIL

There is still the problem of what I use for my seedlings. One solution is to sterilize your own garden soil. There are products on the market that will heat the soil until all the bacteria is destroyed. The prices start at about 70 euros and will do a couple of shovels full at a time. I recall one year I decided to sterilize some soil in the kitchen by using steam. I used a saucepan with boiling water in it and put a metal sieve over the top with about a cupful of garden soil in it at a time and let the steam get to work for half an hour. This method took a full day until I had enough soil to fill a few seed trays. And another day to get the mud off the worktops! I did try just pouring boiling water over the soil, but this proved to be ineffective, as it didn’t kill all the weed seeds. I suppose there’s always the garden flame throwers, but maybe that might be a bit too dramatic…All these methods again use some form of fuel energy to make them work, so maybe the ideal solution is to use the compost from the middle of your well rotted compost bin. (The only energy used here would be walking to your compost bin!) There is a better chance of this being sterile as the center of the heap will get to the highest temperatures, killing all the nasty things that your seedlings won’t like. Mind you there’s not much chance of those temperatures in the centre of my compost heap, so for now I’m off to the Co-op, in my petrol guzzling car, to buy yet another bag of peat based compost to put into my plastic plant pots. How do I sleep at nights?

Horticultural,environmental.