Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - My technique for eliminating Root Knot Nematodes

BVGardener · July 14, 2008

Carolyn, I got a good laugh reading that

. Ya know, that scenario would be real bad here as we only have a volunteer fire department. About nine years ago, our neighbor down the road bought property right next to ours and cleared some of it and then tried to perform a "controlled burn". It quickly got out of control and it got very close to setting our property on fire but fortunately that did not happen. I do remember having to go back out after the volunteer fire department left and having to put out some hot spots here and there.

Ideally, I do want to incorporate some type of controls but just have not been able to make my mind up on the best way. This project will consist of three beds and since they all have RKN, at first I thought I would leave one bed alone and treat the other two but then I wondered if it would be a better comparison if I treated most of each bed and left maybe the last four feet untreated and possibly put a carboard divider between the treated soil and the untreated so that the roots would not make it over to the RKN. Which way would you go?

Thats another good technique, dcarch. The main thing with RKN treatment, is that it pretty much has to be 100% coverage. Once I get into the step-by-step application of this method, it will make sense as to how this can be accomplished. The heat output from this heat gun makes the elimination of RKN instantaneous.

To answer a couple of questions folks may be wondering about, the reason for not using a blow dryer or hair dryer is that you would be blowing the RKN into other areas of your garden because blow dryers use high velocity air along with heat. Heat guns use very high heat but low velocity air. Again, this will make sense once I get into the details of the application. And of course plastic cannot be used as it would melt. Cardboard is the way to go and ideally it needs to be very large pieces or sections like what a refrigerator is packaged in. You do not want to use a bunch of small sections where you have numerous seams or gaps.

Stay tuned...
Jay

July 14, 2008	#7
BVGardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Texas Posts: 542	Carolyn, I got a good laugh reading that . Ya know, that scenario would be real bad here as we only have a volunteer fire department. About nine years ago, our neighbor down the road bought property right next to ours and cleared some of it and then tried to perform a "controlled burn". It quickly got out of control and it got very close to setting our property on fire but fortunately that did not happen. I do remember having to go back out after the volunteer fire department left and having to put out some hot spots here and there. Ideally, I do want to incorporate some type of controls but just have not been able to make my mind up on the best way. This project will consist of three beds and since they all have RKN, at first I thought I would leave one bed alone and treat the other two but then I wondered if it would be a better comparison if I treated most of each bed and left maybe the last four feet untreated and possibly put a carboard divider between the treated soil and the untreated so that the roots would not make it over to the RKN. Which way would you go? Thats another good technique, dcarch. The main thing with RKN treatment, is that it pretty much has to be 100% coverage. Once I get into the step-by-step application of this method, it will make sense as to how this can be accomplished. The heat output from this heat gun makes the elimination of RKN instantaneous. To answer a couple of questions folks may be wondering about, the reason for not using a blow dryer or hair dryer is that you would be blowing the RKN into other areas of your garden because blow dryers use high velocity air along with heat. Heat guns use very high heat but low velocity air. Again, this will make sense once I get into the details of the application. And of course plastic cannot be used as it would melt. Cardboard is the way to go and ideally it needs to be very large pieces or sections like what a refrigerator is packaged in. You do not want to use a bunch of small sections where you have numerous seams or gaps. Stay tuned... Jay