Subject: Re: [permaculture] Tending the Wild, Wood Ash
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:44:35 -0500
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!