Soil Solarization

Has anyone tried soil solarization? I recieved a load of a planting blend that had a real problem with blight and weeds and was thinking of using solarization as one way of improving the beds it was placed i.

Thanks
BB

I put black landscape fabric over the areas I wanted to solarize, and it seemed to work but now the stuff that had been there is coming back (SA grass, mainly). I don't know if using clear plastic would be better, or if I didn't leave it on long enough. (WEEKS seemed long enough at the time...)

I think you're supposed to use clear plastic for solarization. Black plastic might work too, but you definitely have to use plastic--landscape fabric won't work since it allows water and air to pass through it, so the temperatures won't get high enough to fry things.

i think it kills all the good fungi and microbes with the bad, but seeds? seeds can last for years. and then when you remove it it will just repopulate with more microbes and seeds.
if your new plants survived in it it wouldn't be long before everything would just come back anyway. might slow things down for a while but longterm nothing. many plants 80% they claim need mycorhizzae fungus to obtain nutrients and moisture from soil so why kill them?

An alternative might be to carefully remove any blight-affected plant material from the soil, grow things that aren't affected by the particular blight that you have and use newspaper or cardboard mulch to deal with the weeds.

Solarization works well if it gets hot enough but as Len123 pointed out it kills all the wonderful microbial life in your soil that is essential for successful organic gardening. Also, solarization isn't particularly effective on any type of plant that has long-lived, deep rhizomes like poison ivy and Johnson grass although it will kill all the surface weed seeds.

If you absolutely must use solarization water the soil very well and cover with clear plastic for 6 weeks. After solarization use generous amounts of compost to help restore some of the beneficial microbial soil life. Treating the soil with a commercial microbial product and treating plants with mycorrihizae would be good insurance for growing in solarized soil until its life and microbial health has been fully restored.

Raised beds sound so much easier...

Thanks everyone.

Didn't think about killing the good stuff.

These are raised beds. Just built them this year. Got a load of a planting blend that left a lot to be desired.

BB