Uses of Hot Water Weedkillers in a Plant Nursery

Earlier this week I visited a Plant Nursery with our Eco Weedkiller Pro 10 hot water machine. 

The Pro 10 is a very versatile piece of equipment, which can produce hot and cold water at high temperature, which is perfect for cleaning, but also boiling water at low pressure, which is needed for weeding. 

The plant nursery in question is trying to become organic across several of it's sites, which involves removing the use of synthetic chemicals in many of their regular processes.  

They have a variety of fields, sheds and glass houses with varying requirements they were able to achieve by utilising the Eco Weedkiller products;

1. Weeding Plant pots
2. Killing algae and moss on mypex before cleaning it off
3. Weeding around the site, especially next to water courses
4. Killing algae and moss on the glass house panels and cleaning them
5. Pressure washing hard surfaces

Weeding hundreds of plant pots -

I had previously visited this plant nursary back in April last year, and they had the particular need to weed plant pots, which they were doing by hand. 

I got a chance to see the pots we had weeded with water all those months ago, and the results were fantastic, as you can see from the images below;

Applying the hot water	A few days after applying hot water
Almost a year after applying hot water

The only device currently on the market that is really suitable for this kind of weeding is our fully electric range of hot water weed killing devices. The fully electric versions allow spot treating of weeds surrounding the main plant in the pot. Hot water systems using a boiler to heat on demand cannot cope with the frequency of short bursts of water, be cause of a lag in the boiler ignition. The electric model uses pre-heated water, which allows the temperature to remain constant with as many short spot treatments as is necessary.

All other methods, including spraying chemicals and applying hot air, risk drift and therefore risk killing or damaging the main plant in the pot.

So the only other real alternative is to hand weed, which is much more time consuming.

You can read more about this particular advantage here.

Weeding around Mypex Weed Suppression Fabric

The second issue in plant nurseries is managing weeds such as moss and liverwort, or other plants which love to grow around the edges of the Mypex or other weed suppression fabrics. We often use hot air to control weeds such as this, but around Mypex this isn't possible as the fabric will melt. There aren't many choices of chemicals that will deal with moss and Liverwort either. Hot water is an ideal solution, which delivers enough heat to kill the plant, but isn't so hot it will melt the plastic matting easily.

The Matting can then be swept, or pressure washed afterwards using the Pro 10 machine or one of our Kersten Sweepers.

Weed Killing around Mypex surfaces with hot water

sweeping mypex to clean off moss and detritus

Weeding around the site, especially by water courses

The original need for a weedkilling solution was driven by trying to kill weeds by a water source on the property. No weedkiller is allowed to be sprayed by the water, and therefore there is a need to do this another way. 

Eco Weedkiller uses 100% hot water, making it very safe to use around water courses. The Eco Weedkiller Pro 10 uses a diesel boiler to heat the water on demand, allowing the system to be productive all day. And with a 10 liter per minute pump, it is pretty quick, whilst also being able to handle fairly delicate weeding jobs.

With an 80m hose, you can also travel a long way from the vehicle, meaning it can access many areas that cannot be reached directly with large equipment. This is especially useful in the poly tunnels and green houses, where a vehicle will not fit, but must be used from either end. On this particular site, the tunnels could be as long as 120 meters, so the hose length allowed easy treatment from either end of the poly tunnel.

During Hot Water Application next to a water course	After Hot Water Application next to a water course

Killing Moss and Algae on Glass house panels and then cleaning them off.

This Plant nursery has a LOT of glass houses. Each year, algae builds up on the glass. This must be killed before it is cleaned off, to ensure it is not encouraged to grow or spread disease to plants. 

This normally involves a contractor applying chemicals to the whole of the glass building, either by hand or with a drone. 

With the Eco Weedkiller Pro 10, there is the ability to use a hot water pressure washer attachment as well as the low pressure hot water weeder. We were able to kill the algae with the low pressure hot water and then clean off the glass with the higher pressure nozzle (set on the lower end of it's pressure range). This allows the job to be done in far less time, and without using chemicals. 

Killing and cleaning Algae on glass panels

Pressure Washing Hard Surfaces

Of course, the hot and cold water pressure washer functions of this machine are useful in a variety of other places on the site. 

Many hard surfaces can be cleaned using the high pressure lance, including concrete areas, ore even machinery.

Hot water pressure washing a concrete bridge on the site.

For more information on the Eco Weedkiller Pro 10 click here