A long-time organic grower plans to get steaming mad at his weeds this spring, but an expert in the field says the farmer might be the one who ends up getting burned.
Dayton Funk, who farms 45 kilo-metres northeast of North Battleford, Sask., bought a machine last fall that blasts noxious weeds into submission with hot vapours.
He plans to use it to spot-spray thistle, dandelion and quackgrass patches around the farm yard and around the outskirts of some of his pasture land, which has been chemical-free for years.
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“We see around the fringe on the outside edge we’ve got some thistles growing, so I kind of wanted to keep them in check with this outfit,” said Funk.
His “steam blaster” machine consists of a 300-gallon tank mounted on a four-wheel trailer. It has a diesel-powered boiler, a gas generator that powers a pump and thirty metres of hose on a reel.
There are two attachments for the end of the hose, a wand for spot-spraying and a metre-wide rake on wheels for bigger jobs.
Funk, who has been a mixed organic farmer for 12 years, heard about the machine from an acquaintance in Ontario uses one to clean up weeds around playground equipment and to kill grass on soccer field boundary lines where no chemicals are allowed.
He tracked down a similar steamer in Alberta. It had been used by the city of Calgary to clean up weeds around public parks, but the city found it too small for its purposes. The unit cost him about $10,000.
Funk didn’t have a chance to use the equipment last year. It arrived on his farm in late September when all the vegetation was already frozen.
“All we did was winterize it and put it away,” he said.
In addition to spot-spraying around the farm yard and garden Funk plans to use the steamer to kill the weeds growing around the small trees in his shelterbelt where he can’t use chemical control methods.
Based on conversations with his Ontario acquaintance Funk expects good things from his purchase. The steam melts the waxy surface on plant leaves, causing irreparable damage to the weeds by rupturing their cell structure.
“Apparently it does kill out these weeds. One or two passes with this steam and it cooks them.”
If it lives up to his expectations Funk plans to rent it out to some of the multitudes of organic farmers in his area to see if it has any large-scale farming applications.
Saskatchewan Agriculture weed specialist Clark Brenzil said the steam blaster could effectively control annual weeds like wild oats, but it won’t work on perennials like thistle and quackgrass that have most of their energy reserves in root systems deep beneath the soil.
“They’re going to end up re-growing as soon as you take the top off,” he said.
In fact, once the dominant chute is destroyed there may be five or six weeds replacing it.
“It may kind of work in the other direction for a perennial plant,” said Brenzil.
“It’s not going to be the equivalent of an organic herbicide.”
The other thing to consider is that it takes a “phenomenal amount” of energy to get water up to boiling temperature and maintain it there, so the steam blaster would be an inefficient mechanism for controlling weed problems around the farm.
Funk said if all else fails he plans to use the steamer to clean engine motors and disinfect the barns and chicken coops on his yard.
