In article ,
Doug Freyburger wrote:
Nad R wrote:
"Steve Peek" wrote:
Billy, what process do you use to sterilize soil? I've got some beautiful
leaf mold, but it's full of weed seeds.
I asked him that same question a few years back... His response...A
toaster oven. It is after all a simple but effective solution.
I had thought in terms of letting the composting process run to
completion. Last year's composting pile turned the year it cooked is
this year's compost ready for use. Effective when you have the open
space available. I did some composting when I had a back yard. I
recently switched to an apartment with a desk so there's no more room.
I wondered if the toaster oven would work for seeds. Some seeds can
survive drying out. When I read it I thought it was for mold, fungus
and whatever. Toaster oven is clever for small amounts - Thanx!
Doug, what do you want to do with the seeds? If you plan on these seeds
being fertile after getting the shake and bake treatment, I'd forget the
oven. Failing that, use a thick wall container and see what happens at
100F (Do they go that low? hmmm.)
Try to mimic what the seeds would experience in their native habitat.
Don't heat 24hr/day.
Somewhere on the net there are instructions for making a solar food
drier. I made something similar last year for drying herbs. It is
basically a box with one transparent side, and the side opposite the
transparent side should be black, and there should be a small hole on
top, and a large hole on the bottom. When the transparent side faces the
sun, the air heats, the water evaporates, the warm moist air goes up and
out the hole on top, and dry cool air is sucked into the bottom of the
box.
http://www.i4at.org/surv/soldehyd.htm
or more generally
http://www.dehydratorbook.com/homemade-dehydrator.html
--
- Billy
"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist."
-Archbishop Helder Camara
http://peace.mennolink.org/articles/...acegroups.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...130964689.html