J & A Growers Ltd | Soil Sanitisation

The leading UK growers of quality bareroot trees and hedging
Supplying the wholesale nursery trade

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J & A Growers is the first bare-root tree nursery in the UK to use a steaming machine to sterilise their soil before sowing, thanks to the Harvesting and Processing Grant administered by the Scottish Government which part funded this new equipment.

A single pass machine, the CM Regero works autonomously down five beds at a time, sealing the long hoods over the newly formed beds and injecting the soil with hot steam for several minutes.

The heating process removes the bad pathogens and many weed seeds from the top layer of the beds leaving a nice sterile seedbed which is instantly ready for sowing. This replaces the traditional method of incorporating chemicals and leaving them for many weeks to get the same result.

Steaming soil is a slow operation, the steam needs to penetrate and heat the soil until it reaches the required temperature. This is determined by the pathogens and weed seeds to be controlled and is best done to 80 – 90 degrees C for full control.

The time taken to achieve this depends upon your soil type, the current soil temperature and soil moisture content. At J & A Growers the Regero machine cleanses between 140 - 170 square metres per hour on a light sandy loam soil.