You are basically solarizing the soil. This can be useful to do in certain cases, but I doubt it will do much for a nematode problem. I suppose it depends how extensive the problem is. What I am thinking is that with a heavy population you kill them in a limitted amount of soil and then put the soil back onto tode infested ground.

Anyway, I would think you could do the same thing with clear plastic sheeting although it wouldn't retain the heat as well as what you are describing. Probably more practical for a large area though.

Hi, username5 and the group. Yes I have a major problem with root knot nematodes. I have been working on the problem from many angles. Yes I have read of solarizing the soil and it is one of many options I'm thinking of. Some of the problems I believe with solarizing the soil are it takes a long time and I do not believe very high temperatures can can be achieved because of the heat loss into the ground. I have read that root knot nematodes are in real trouble at 130 F. I'm sure that if I can get 200 F the nematodes would be toast. If I can get the oven to work my long term plans are to build a big one that would hold 4 to 8 cubic feet of soil. This would be enough to do 2 or 3 large pots or even better, the soil that was around two or three tomato plants at the end of the season. I would did up the soil, bake it then amend the soil and put it back in the hole. That should go a very long way to keeping the nematodes from building up. At this point I'm really looking at the oven as a maintenance tool. I hope it works and I will post follow ups on how the prototype does.

Take care, DC

If your idea works to control nematode damage you will have a lot of folks very interested in the results and plans to build their own.

Are you in a regular organic program and you still have nematodes? We're talking about root knot nematodes I presume. I'm curious about that.

Dchall,

I don't know what the soil in San Antonio is like. But when I moved to Tx from FL I was armed for war with nematodes. My arsenal included marigolds and plastic. In FL it is a teriffic problem, it is a constant battle. My mother gave up on growing tomatoes because the nematodes (root knot) just take every thing down. They are a huge problem.

I was delighted to find out I didn't have to automatically treat for them here. I think it is the FL sandy soil or acidity or something but FL is a huge nematode breeding ground. Here in Tx, we have a chance of using organics and such. It is just different in TX. Except for the heat causing blossom drop, growing tomatoes here has been a real joy.

Charlie,

In a previous post, you said you couldn't get distilled water, I would suggest just buying deionized water at the store. If you want it to not be pH 5 it has to be freshly distilled/deionized or buffered because it reacts with the CO2 in the air to drop the pH from 7 to 5. Setting up a still is a pain, see if filtering systems would be cheeper cause they are much easier or maybe the filtering systems at grocery or healtfood stores would probably work well enough.

I was curious about this dazitol. I looked it up, have you read the patent? You might find it interesting here is the [Link](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=6&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&p=1&S1=((capsaicin+AND+nematodes)+AND+isothiocyanate)&OS=capsaicin+AND+nematodes+AND+isothiocyanate&RS=((capsaicin+AND+nematodes)+AND+isothiocyanate)). I dont see why you couldn't rig something like this yourself. It is made of mustard oil, citrus oil, and capsaicin-from chili peppers, a detergent -wetting agent I believe fabric softeners have the right nonionic detergenets in them, and vegetable oil. A home made conconction would sure be easy to try.

Hi Kris and the group.

Thanks for the notes on the distilled water. I might try the deionized water for my PH tests or because I need so little water to run the tests I might try to make a very simple still by using small copper tubing and a old pot. Drilling a hole in the cover of the old pot and rigging up a coil of the tubing over the side of the stove and to a collection bottle on the floor. With the help of a fan on the coil I'm sure it would drip out the distilled water. If it works then you know the moonshine still would be the next project ;-)

Regarding the link to the Dazitol patent, that was interesting. Sure does seem like a motivated person could make a home brew version. Got any takers?

Take care, DC

Hi all, here is an update on my solar oven prototype. We have had some nice mostly sunny days recently and I have been able to do some testing. So far things are looking good I have gotten 130F with two different soil samples with the weaken November sun. I'm sure 160F + will not be a problem with the stronger summer sun. I have found it takes a very long time for the soil to heat up. It keeps rising the whole day until the sun sets. All I need is a longer day to get more heat. One mistake I made is I put my first thermostat under the plexiglass and it got so hot it melted! The solar oven is definitely capturing the heat from the sun. Just need more time to get it into the soil.

Take care, DC

Hi all, one last update. I tried lowering the depth of the inner box to reduce the amount of soil to be heated hoping to speed up the heating. It was about 6 inches deep and now is about 3.

It helped and I got 150F with the weak November sun. It is looking like the target of 160F + will not be a problem come summer. Think I will make one out of plywood and pine planks and use a 36" x 48" piece of plexiglass from HD. It should hold between 2 to 4 cubic feet of soil depending on how deep I make the inner box.

Should be interesting, DC