Soil Sterilization

Aaron Hicks (ahicks@prism.nmt.edu)
Sat, 19 Nov 1994 02:43:50 GMT

For soil sterilization, it was once suggested to me that it
was sufficient to take a turkey bag, fill it with a given quantity of
soil, and then bake it for the same time and temperature as you
would a turkey... although my scientific experiments have not
included a foray into calculating the thermal conductivity of
turkey versus that of a decaying log, it'd be a good guess this
should kill off _most_ problem critters. If you need it for more
critical purposes, I'd just take a few canning jars full of soil,
and drop them into a pressure cooker at 15 psi, and (someone help
me here) half an hour? Hmmm....

On the in vitro thread: although it's pretty common with
orchids, I've yet to see green pod seed sowing done with CP's,
possibly due to the size difference, maybe not... what is generally
done with orchids is that a green seed pod is removed, and then scrubbed
with a 10% bleach solution. This is then peeled, and scrubbed down again
with isopropyl, and then cut the length of the pod. Then either quarters
or eighths (or, for larger pods, smaller sections) are dropped directly
onto the media, leaving the seeds to distribute themselves (given the
size of orchid seed, this would normally occur; CPs might need some
help).
So... has it been done?

-AJHicks
NMTech