- Author: Carl E. Bell
- Posted by: Gale Perez
Several years ago my colleague Dr. James Stapleton, UC IPM Plant Pathologist at the Kearney Agricultural Center in Parlier, CA developed a method to kill nematodes in potted plant soils. He called this method tent solarization and it was accepted by the CA Department of Food and Agriculture as an alternative to fumigation. Click here (UC Plant Protection Quarterly, July 2001) to see a publication on this method.
The process is described in more detail in this PDF (Using Solar Tents to Destroy Plant Propagative Material in Remote Locations) from my website. A journal article on the process is Stapleton, J.J. 2012. Feasibility of solar tents for inactivating weedy plant propagative material. Journal of Pest Science, 85:17-21.
Do we guarantee this method? No, it can fail if the process is not done right, if there is limited sunshine or time, it the outer tent gets torn, or it the seed is really hard to kill. So try it, but at least for the first few times, make sure the seed is really dead before you dump out the bag in the field.
Original source: Invasive Plants in Southern California blog
UCPlantProtectionQuarterly 2001 July
UsingSolarTentsToDestroyPlantPropagativeMaterialInRemoteLocations