Sterilising soil?

[dave45]

I have just built a rather large greenhouse and I would like to use the soil inside rather than growbags. Friends have recommended against doing this due to pest and disease build-up. How serious is this? If so can I get around it by sterilising the soil periodically? (we have a household steamer - for wallpaper removal etc - will this do the trick?).

What do other folks do?

[Odsox]

I don't think it's that much of a problem.
I built a largish greenhouse 15 years ago and filled the (raised) beds with a mixture of cow manure and ordinary garden soil and had no problems at all.
Weeds are a bit of a pain for the first year or so but if you keep on top of the weeding it soon becomes more or less weed free.
Also depending on how big your greenhouse is it would take forever to sterilise that much soil without using chemicals.
It's up to you of course, but I wouldn't bother.

[Ellendra]

You can bake your soil in the oven to sterilize it, that doesn't take too long. Smells weird though, so do it on a day you can have the windows open.

[frozenthunderbolt]

i did my seed raising mix on plates in the microwave - seemed to work fine

[Odsox]

I agree with the above two posts that it's fairly easy to sterilise soil, but the original question was for a large greenhouse border.
I have no idea how big Dave's greenhouse is, but if you take mine as an example .. 20' x 12' with two borders 5' wide.
If I were to sterilise the top foot of soil that would be 20 x 12 x 2 = 480 cubic feet of soil, or about 13,600 litres for you metricated people.
I think it would take a while to microwave that at a couple of litres a time.

[frozenthunderbolt]

I agree with the above two posts that it's fairly easy to sterilise soil, but the original question was for a large greenhouse border.
I have no idea how big Dave's greenhouse is, but if you take mine as an example .. 20' x 12' with two borders 5' wide.
If I were to sterilise the top foot of soil that would be 20 x 12 x 2 = 480 cubic feet of soil, or about 13,600 litres for you metricated people.
I think it would take a while to microwave that at a couple of litres a time.

You may be right

"Hello, Freecycle? Yes I need 3Doz industrial microwaves please"

[Jandra]

It's always possible to replace the soil in the greenhouse if pests and diseases should get in. I really don't think this soil needs to be sterilised. And if there really is a problem you can always switch to growbags at that point. Seems to me there's no need to invest a lot of effort in something that can be solved if and when it arises.

Happy greenhouse growing,
Jandra
(who's growing tomatoes and peppers in her unsterilised greenhouse for the 3rd year now)

[Peggy Sue]

I would doubt there are many pests and diseases in the soil at the moment as I assume ti hasn't been used for veggies yet- as I've always understood it the danger is if you grow say tomatoes every year in teh GH, which is failry likely, then the likes of blight is an issue. If the GH is big enough to rotate I guess that solves the problem?