News

Organic farmer calls flame weeder cool and scary

An organic crop farmer in southwest Minnesota calls one of the tools she uses to manage weeds the coolest and scariest thing she owns.

Carolyn Olson grows corn, soybeans, and small grains near Cottonwood in Lyon County.

As an alternative to biotechnology and herbicides, she controls weeds in a variety of ways.

“We’ll start with a long-tooth harrow, or some people call it a drag.   After that, we’ll go through with the rotary hoe and then the cultivator.  With corn, we also use a flame weeder.”

Olson says her flame weeder features 36 burners covering 18 rows, with two burners pointed at the base of each corn plant.

“We’ll go through when the corn is at least a foot tall, that way we’re not burning too much of the corn plant.  The corn will look pretty ugly when we get done, but it’ll burn the broadleaf weeds and hopefully kill those.”

She tells Brownfield flame weeders have been used on her farm for at least a decade.

“The flames are basically heating up all the cells in the plant, and those cells burst because the water has turned to steam.  So that’s how the plants are killed.  A lot of kind of fun science going on there.”

Olson says the flame weeder they use now is a retrofitted sprayer frame with a 1,000 gallon LP tank, which allows her to raise and lower the flame height.