permaculture

[Allan Balliett <aballiett@frontiernet.net>]

Rob - I have a flame weeder. It's not used to burn up weed seeds. 
It's used to wilt emerging weed seedlings, not by burning them up but 
by making them hot enough that cells rupture in the leaves and, in a 
few hourse, the little plants die. The weeder is NOT recommended for 
use on large plants or on established plants. Typical use: you make a 
stale bed for a carrot crop. Carrot seeds are notoriously slow to 
germinate, so there will be some extended bare soil time. Just before 
the carrots should emerge, you run the flame weeder and kill emerging 
weeds, some of them too small to have actually been noticed by your 
naked eye. You move the weeder fast enough to make certain that you 
DO NOT make the soil hot enough to destroy the carrot seeds. Make 
sense? It don't take a lot of fuel and it don't make a lot of ash. It 
can save a lot of subsequent hand weeding, though!