Solar cooking for your garden?

[gaiatechnician]

On utube I am gaiatechnician too. My most recent solar cooker is a "compound" parabolic solar cooker that cooks at least 7 liters at a time.
A compound parabolic cooker does not produce a burning spot of light but it does keep the light on the cooking pot for a long time. Mine does up to 3 hours of cooking before you need to point it at the sun again!
I cook soil! 7 liters of soil, 1 liter of water into a big pot. Leave it cooking at the right spot in the solar cooker and it gets to 90C! This should be hot and steamy enough to kill all the weed seeds and bugs in the soil. and that means your can grow seedlings in it safely. You do not have to buy in potting compost.
You could also use this type of solar cooker to cook up diseased plants.
I imagine 90C will kill just about everything, including diseased plants, mildew and blight. That might save having to throw diseased or insecty plants out in the garbage.
Solar Cook them first and then put them in the compost!
I have 2 videos about the solar cooker. Dome mold and easy optics.
And if you want I can make a pdf file and template available too.
Brian

[gardengirl72]

Interesting videos. Everyone you should check them out and share their thoughts. Personally, I want to grill! High eat solar cooking! Tell me about that one!

[MistieMae1]

Never in a million years would I have thought about cooking soil in a solar cooker. Very interesting!

Great videos.

[gardengirl72]

I think cooking soil is a good idea. I have a wilt problem in my soil that cooking it might solve, the problem is how much soil could be cooked at once? And then what else can I do with the cooker?

[dogmom4]

I've heard of cooking your soil before...a friend did it in her oven. The smell was bad... I have this type of solar cooker...
http://www.eartheasy.com/solar_oven.htm
It would definitely get hot enough to kill anything in the soil...although you would have to do small amounts at a time. What would you do with a solar cooker? Cook with it! I have baked biscuits, chicken,heated up frozen foods and even got water to boil to make oatmeal in a jar. If you have enough sun solar cooking is definitely the way to go...

[gaiatechnician]

I cook 7 liters at a time. You can easily do 2 batches per day in the summer. So 14 liters (14 quarts?) per day in my size of solar oven per day in the summer.
I was thinking of going twice as big (which would be fairly easy) and cooking more at a time.
I only cooked food in it once. Because it was made for the pot that I was using and I did not want to cook food after cooking soil. It can certainly boil water.
If any of you make one, I suggest leaving water in it all the time. Point it to the morning, or afternoon sun. Then when you go out to cook food, you already have boiling water ready to start! It might save a lot of time.
But yeah, lots of things to cook in it.
I have a instructables site with info on it. My name there is gaiatechnician too.
I only made the first one in September so they are experimental.
I recently found info about the sk14 solar ovens made in germany and how fast they cook.
Mine is not quite as quick but comparable!
Lots to learn for sure, but many people trying it could make for very quick learning!
On an engineering website, a guy calculated that my cooker could pay for itself in a year with 1 meal per week! (It is only 200 watts so comparable to a slow cooker).
He also calculated that a 15 watt solar panel (with the charge controller and battery to store the energy included) would pay for itself in 70 YEARS!
Just a few thoughts to digest there!

[plantoneonme]

I am sure this is not nearly as sterilizing as actually cooking the soil but I solarize my raised beds by wetting down the soil after clean up and putting black plastic over them (make sure to anchor down the sides well). I leave it on over the winter and come spring it is solarized...weed seeds etc are cooked.

I also had time to check your instructables...really nice.

[AbbeyLehman]

I am sure this is not nearly as sterilizing as actually cooking the soil but I solarize my raised beds by wetting down the soil after clean up and putting black plastic over them (make sure to anchor down the sides well). I leave it on over the winter and come spring it is solarized...weed seeds etc are cooked.

I also had time to check your instructables...really nice.

I did this last year in the new garden spot....Lots of weeds, still, but that may have been due to the foot thick layer of leaves under the plastic :) I have used boiling water to some degree of success in the past as well, although that's not as energy efficient (unless you have extra from something else, for some reason).