Solarization - How to let the Sun do your Weeding!

 

 

Hey folks I’ve got a good use for the Texas summer heat. We can actually use our brutal summer time temps to get rid of something we gardeners dislike even more than our sultry humidity, weeds! Yes, that’s right! We can use the sun to get rid of those annoying weeds. The process is called solarization and it’s an easy way to clear a space of weeds.

 

I’ve been fighting weeds at one of my school gardens for about a year. When I began working with the garden there, the weeds had taken over because nothing had been planted in the vegetable bed for some months. A rule of nature is that bare ground equals an invitation to weeds. Nature doesn’t like bare ground and will quickly fill it in if you do not. As a result, I’ve been pulling weeds nonstop in that bed. Now that school is out, a summer vegetable garden is not necessary, so I’m using the down time to take some extreme measures for a weed-free veggie garden in the fall. So if you have an area you need to clear, now is the perfect time for you to try this too as we enter the hottest part of the year.

 

Process

The process is really easy. It works like this:

1. Clear the area to get as level a surface as possible. The closer the plastic is to the soil, the deeper the heat can penetrate the soil.
2. Water deeply before or after clearing the area.
3. Cover the area with clear plastic, anchoring the sides as tightly as possible. Clear plastic is important because it heats faster. Black plastic, while eliminating the sun weeds need to grow, it doesn’t get hot enough. Use bricks or mounded up soil to anchor plastic. You want a tight fit, so very little air gets in. The tighter the fit, the hotter it gets.
4. Leave the plastic on for at least 4 – 6 weeks to kill as many seeds as possible. Weed seeds are hard to kill so a sustained period of heat is needed to kill them.

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