Organic Soil "Baking" Method?

I have read in some threads how people will mix their soil then place it outside for at least 30 days to "bake". The other day a friend of mine told me that he would literally bake his soil in his oven. I was wondering if what he was describing was a replacement method for the 30 days outside or if both are needed?

Your buddy is an idiot if he thinks baking his mix in the oven speeds up the process in the medium, do not listen too him. Give your mix a couple of weeks and plant away. You can plant straight into a couple of days after mixing if you like. All the nutrients just will no be avaiable at that point.

HAAHAHAHA your friend actually put that much soil in his oven!!He probably made a mess all over the place. I have a compost pile that made in my back yard all of my scrap food goes in there and all my natural waste gets thrown in there incuding grass clippings and dog poo. I also add earthworms & cow manure and chicken manure. I mix all that stuf up and over time all the old food decomposes. MAKING YOUR OWN COMPOST IS GREAT BUT MAKE SURE!! that before you mix your compost with potting soil it is crucial that you bake your compost in the sun. Physically spread the compost out and let it bake for at least 20 -30days depending on how hot it has been outside. After i let it bake i go to my local hydro store and buy a $10 compost tea and i feed my compost the tea. The baking kills all the bad organism that are in the compost, in fact it kills all the microogranisms the bad ones and the good ones. So by feeding your compost the tea at the end it creates millions of good micro organisms and this my friend is the best fertilizer you could ever imagine. Your plants will thrive off this shit!! and the compost seems to make my weed taste soooooooo sooo dank. MJKILLER

Ok, I talked to him again and he said for me to bake the soil in the oven to kill any pests that might be in the soil. He says that even the soil that is bought at gardening stores might have pests or larva in it.

If I understand Subcool's Super Soil method correctly (combined with the previous post's info), the 30 days outside "baking" is to kill the microorganisms.

So, my question is this: If I bake my base soil in my oven then mix in all the Subcool ingredients to make his super soil, will I still need to do the 30 days of outside "baking"? Or would this just be adding an unnecessary step to this process? If killing the organisms in the soil is the objective than isn't that accomplished by baking it in the oven? In which case we can take this whole soil baking process down from 30 days to 1 or maybe 2 days. Doesn't that seem to be more efficient?

Or, would mixing up Subcool's SS concentrate then baking the mixture in the oven be the better alternative to the 30 days outside seeing as it only takes maybe 1-2 days to do it this way?

Oh and to the comment about it making a mess in the oven, c'mon man, I ain't ignorant. Do you really think that I would try to cram ALL of my soil into my oven? Please use common sense. I didn't really think that I needed to explain this but here we go: Your oven has 3 or 4 racks in it. You take your soil and spread it out in cookie sheets. Pre-Bake your oven to 350 degrees. Place 1 cookie sheet full of soil on each available rack in your oven. Bake for 1 hour. Remove cookie sheets then put new soil in the cookie sheets and continue repeating this process until all of your soil is ready.

Can the responses be limited to answering the questions? Why does everyone on the internet feel the need to go into auto-attack mode when responding to a question? I could have sworn that this IS the newbie central, and as such, strange types of questions should be expected.

kushking42 directed me to a thread that had the answer:

Corbat420 said:

LOL thats not what we mean by cooking..... there are 3 different kinds of cooking soil.

#1 ovens, to kill parasites and bacteria......
#2 "cooking" manure. letting it sit for 12+ months to degrade. manure produces heat and "cooks" its self. you can see manure piles steaming in the winter....
#3 cooking "hot" soil. hot in this case means it has ammonia nitrates present in the soil. ammonia damages the root hairs if there is too much of it. dolomite lime (or sweet lime) produces ammonia as it degrades, there for letting it sit for a month or more is generally a very good thing because the bacteria in good organic soils breaks ammonia nitrates down into fixed nitrogen.

you want to do #3 for subs soil. everything else is already done for you in the factories with the nutes.

Click to expand...

Thank you kushking42.

Forget the fucking oven!

That 30 days outside isn't to kill anything, but to give the beneficial bacteria a chance to multiply and start breaking down the organic amendments so the plant can use them.

It's also referred to as a 'cook' not a bake. Like putting all the ingredients in a pot and letting them meld, not killing everything by baking it in an oven.

Do a bit more research on this, because someone has seriously skewed the whole concept of 'cooking' organic soil for you.

I've been doing this for close to 40 years and have NEVER once put any soil or mix in a oven.

Or, go ahead and do this. It will be one fuck of a learning experience. LOL

BTW, I'm not pissed at you, but whoever gave you this totally WRONG information. Send him/her back to the village that is missing an idiot.

Wet

313 Kronix said:

Ok, I talked to him again and he said for me to bake the soil in the oven to kill any pests that might be in the soil. He says that even the soil that is bought at gardening stores might have pests or larva in it.

Click to expand...

Then your friends not an idiot, just internet over cautious......Remember this. Read and learn. Put into practice and gain experience. Reflect on the new knowledge aquired. Then share..........

And to post a answer. Yes any bag of medium can have bugs. But guess what, if you have bugs you deal with them. Soil born pest can be controlled with simple dishsoap and water when used properly. I do believe even Sub himself said in one of his threads something along the same lines.