Microwave as a sterilizer?

My mom loves her container gardening, she's got pots and troughs every where - on the floor, fixed to walls, hanging baskets...the works.

Over the last 2-3 years vine weevil has started to really take hold, and its destroying her garden. We tried replacing all the soil (works out expensive), fumigating the greenhouse and general 'clean it up' tactics, but its made no difference.

Now, as she's on a pension and I'm 'between jobs', we're trying to avoid the expense of replacing all the soil again, and I had a brain wave.

Could she put some soil (in a container ^^ ) in the microwave and blast it for a minute - surely that'd kill any bugs/mites/ticks/eggs that were lurking?

 

You certainly could do, heat until hot to the touch and then let it cool down again before using...

Not sure what effect this also has on the fertility of the compost; if any?, so perhaps a little fertiliser would have to be added when planting again???

 

I have read of people putting a bowl of soil in the microwave to sterilize it. Pretty sure they used full power for 10 minutes ... so you may want to research it a bit as maybe "blast it for a minute" is not enough?

 

I wondered myself if it would affect the fertility of the soil - thats why I didn't want to incinerate it

I can feel an experiment coming on :D

Thank you

 

If you have a tower steamer in the kitchen that could be useful for killing the bugs, I'm told that's the way it was done when gardeners mixed their own compost, although I suspect the 'cooking time' would be longer than a microwave.

 

When I worked on a nursery we had perforated clip-together metal pipes - I guess they were about 3" - 4" diameter. We would dig a trench in the greenhouse borders, assemble the pipes, ridge the soil over the top, cover with a tarpaulin, and then hook up to the boiler (we had underground pipes connecting all the greenhouses). I reckon it ran for several hours, and we have to leave the soil a day or more before it was cool enough to level it back out again (by hand!)

Maybe someone took the temperature of the soil to know when it was "done" - but the tower-steamer sounds like a good idea (more expensive [in terms of fuel-used] though, I would expect)

 

I read somewhere that you can just put the soil in large saucepans (ones that you don't want to ever cook in again) and stick it on the gas or leccy hob, and thoroughly heat up the soil.

 

I think that will "burn" the humus in the soil, and steam would be better.

Dunno what the effect of microwave is, but any water in the bugs should get cooked, at least.