How to Solarize Soil

Series Summary

Landscaping the front or back yard doesn't have to be a professional job. Home gardens and well-kept lawns provide a tranquil area for reflection and relaxation. Tending and enjoying a garden or lawn can lower blood pressure, ease anxiety and provide diversion in which to ponder thoughts or enjoy the day. Even a small yard space can contain a garden or healthy grass. In this free video series on gardening, an professional landscaper explains some tips for lawn care and gardening. Find out how to repair a weed eater and restring a weed eater. Learn how to solarize or sterilize soil and how to make grass greener. Get tips on starting a grass cutting business and find out how to grow grass in Texas. Learn to get rid of bees, earwigs or snakes, all with help from these free videos.

Video Transcript

"I'm Bill Elzey of Show Place Lawns. Lets talk a little bit about solarizing the soil. What we are trying to do here is to get rid of all the vegetative growth that's in an area before we replace it with some other plants. The best way to do this is to get some black plastic, stretch it out over the area that you want to solarize. Be sure that it's weighted down good. And that the edges are flat. Leave that for about ten, fifteen days and a lot of that is going to depend on the time of the year and how much sunlight you are getting and hot it's going to be. Ideally you want to do this when you get more sun and it is warmer. Because that warm sun hitting this black plastic is what's going to do the job for you. Black plastic is keeping the light out. You've got it down tight enough, you are keeping air away and then you are using the heat. That's going to take care of your vegetation and without having to use any kind of chemicals or anything else. This is actually the way to go. Just be careful of when you are doing it. If it's in the cooler part of the year, you may need to leave it down longer to get the same effect. Because you are trying to clean the old vegetation out. So the key is going to be how much sunlight you are getting and how warm the temperature is. With this basically simple process in solarizing the soil."