Kitchen Garden Forum

I bet you-all thought I've been dossing or on holiday. I just got so fed up of loosing crop to to annual/perrenial weeds I bought a burner because of stuff I read about using heat to control what grows naturally from the soil, but you don't want.

The first bed I treated with the burner had killed all the top growth but new seedling quickly appeared. The next bed I treated was turned over and over and burnt on each turn. No doubt I killed all the worms and other beneficial organisms but I really did have to do something.

The second attempt so far looks like the answer, nothing has grown in six weeks. Not even the seeds that I sowed, this surprised me because I sowed four different types and nothing emerged.

I killed the soil ?

I've used one for three years but I only burn the weeds not the soil around the weed

Thanks Robo, thanks for sharing. Did you only burn the weeds because you were scared or because you know something you have yet to share.

I have to admit that I was scared about burning the soil though I had read that this was a solution.

I,ve always wondered about burning the soil and killing the worms. For many years I used to have one annual bonfire on a bare patch of my vegetable plot to burn non compostible stuff such as thick wooden stems. It would give the soil underneath, and possible nearby, a good old roasting which probably wasn't good for it but In the process I also accumumulated some wood ash which possibly added something back to the soil.

I don,t burn stuff any more.and although it,s darned hard work I,m convinced that digging and hand weeding is probably still the best way of clearing weeds but I probably don't have the large amount of growing space that Richard has to clear!

I used to burn stuff in a bonfire, don't recall any problems the following spring, I bought a propane wand to do paths and slabs and found it a total waste of time and money as it didn't kill anything.

I only burn certain types of weeds mainly horse's tails ,nettles, and prickles the rest I hoe or pull out ,I don't burn the soil as I did not want to kill worms unnecessary

Hi Richard! Wondered where you were - would never have guessed you were practising to be a pyromaniac!

I think you have to time the burning before the weed has seeds & just zap the plant & be patient as it will die, you don't have to frazzle it all at once, you've burst the cells in the plant with the heat & it will die. The new seedlings would be better to hoe off with a really sharp hoe while still tiny and that won't take too much energy - I do mean sharp though.

The other trick is to cover your unused beds & paths with black plastic over winter. (Not pretty I admit). Then in spring roll it back, don't take it off, let the weed seedlings come up & cover it again to kill those. That will give you a head start weed free to get your plants big enough to cope with a few later weeds which will be weak & easy to pull. It also encourages the worms & other stuff to hide under it, then you will have healthy soil as well.

Any way I'm sure you've researched all possible alternatives & my weeds will be very different to yours. Just don't give up, you won't beat them but some you can live with - almost!

Smile. Yes, a neighbor saw me burning weeds in the drive but she came closer because of the roaring sound of the burner. The burner head is almost the size of a tin-can.

I had to do something, the carrots I had sown in a bed were engulfed by weed seedling so much that I just could not see the carrot seedlings in order to pull weeds out.

The ground here used to be farmed, sheep and dairy but not intensive farming so annuals and perremials would have been allowed to proliferate. Somebody on this forum pointed out that in the case of a plant of the mustard family, the seeds are viable in the ground for fifty years. Presumably others will also remain viable.

As penance for burning I'll go the extra mile on composted nutrition, I'll be collecting sea weed at the next low tide to add too the composting heap.

I feel like a murderer.

As if to illustrate self seeding this years massive crop of Borage and Marigolds also took over the strawberry patch and a salad patch, though they were more welcome and allowed.

I did manage a crop of Charlotte just after coming back from Greece but even though the foliage had been blighted weeds didn't bother the plants presumably because I hammered the soil with fertilizer suited to spuds so the weeds got covered to some extent though that particular bed has always been less affected by weeds.

Richard you do make me smile!

The carrots will still be there under the weeds as they go down & most likely protected from carrot fly as they will never find them under the weeds. We get too angsty about weeds & want the perfect patch but we have lives outside the garden as well - yep doesn't look pretty at times, but it's not about pretty but about crops we can get out & eat. Your spuds prove that; if the patch was cleared the spuds would have been mush.

Just do what you can do weed wise, no one is going to judge you in your own garden. I have to keep some semblance of order for the monthly inspection on lottie, but fortunately they don't enter the plot so don't see the back bits that get out of control regularly! I believe there may even be some sweet potatoes somewhere down there. Will find out when I do a rough clear ready for covering for winter. (Or not)

Westi - your comments remind me of a couple of my favourite interesting older books - Hovel in the Hills, and Garden in the Hills, by Elizabeth West. She and her husband did the self sufficiency "Good Life" in a small cottage in Wales, and often had to leave their allotment garden for weeks on end during their latter years there to other jobs to survive. She said they would return to see their garden allotment looked like a jungle, having been unattended, but when they peered under all the weeds, they often found a variety of crops still growing healthily. The books are out of print now but still available on Amazon and are a good read.

It's good that I make you smile, more likely the sort of grin I get out of Mo because my obsessions and odd ways amuse her. It was Mo who encouraged me into kitchen gardening at a time she couldn't get me to create an orderly flower garden and even though our flower garden is added to each year it hardly ever seems to improve.

Good news, I turned the soil over in the bed that I had burned heavily and I saw worms. I think I may have managed to deal with the nettle roots that could only be described as an infestation, the nettle roots came with the cow-poo laden soil that has been such a benefit. Seems only the heavy burning will have dealt with those trillions of roots.

We will see next year if the heavy burning had the desired effect, as to the comment that burning never got rid of any weeds in the case of Tigerburnie, I have kept our driveways clear by burning rather than pulling and chemicals. The exception being the odd deep rooted plant that came back growing from the remaining root but didn't survive a second dose.

I use a 6 kilo propane cylinder on a sack truck rather one of those little cans of gas I see advertised along with a burner-wand. On my plot that wouldn't last five minutes. If my burning project is a success I'll be happy I didn't use glyphosate, weeds always came back after a glyphosate treatment. Often the glyphosate doesn't get down into the root system enough to stop nettle, creating buttercup and a few others I can't remember the name of.

Westi, I'm surprised you receomend I just ignore the weeds to let whatever I have sown grow in amongst them. I had often wondered about doing that though the health and tenacity of the weed growth I get has killed of or at least inhibited the growth of some well established planting. The main and only survivors of our weed growth seem to be the spring growth of daffodils that seem to push up through just about anything.

I killed the entire growth of grassy annual and perennial invasive species on an area of bank with glyphosate so I can sow and plant wildflower types that I tried to introduce but the invasive species just swamp them out. As new growth appears that the glyphosate didn't deal with I will burn through autumn and into early next summer then sow and plant.

I'm kicking back Westi.

I'm on a burning frenzy this morning, in fact I'm on 'Jobs-to-be-done' frenzy. Already did two roofing repairs where slates had slipped and now I'm going around picking of unsightly weeds going out of the chipping.

Here is my new 'Boys-toy'.

A roofers torch.
Wise move to have the gas on wheels.

It was a comment by you that gave me a clue, way back and i don't remember the topic.

As regards keeping the driveway clear of weeds this may be a 50% saving on costs compared to chemicals and I dread to think of the legacy I leave using chemicals in the ground whatever the pharmaceuticals say.

Ah Primrose - maybe a relative wrote those, not from my side of the family obviously! I'll have a peek on 'A' and check it out - thanks!

Richard - glad you've got worms, maybe you should burn the cow poo before you put it on the beds? My smile btw is a smile not a grimace - I have a bit of a problem in my home as well - now he gets a grimace, especially when he doesn't do what promised in the time frame needed! I'm currently overdoing the conversation of clearing the greenhouse completely. What is that model boat doing in there? The dead mower? The patio chair that rusted through? Mr Westi??