Steriliseing soil

Not sure where this should be posted,  feel free to move as required
How do you sterilise soil that you may be using in seed sowing or in baskets, I spread some soil over the top of a tin sheet then used a weed wand to try to clean it up a bit, but doubt if it's hot enough to do any good, so wondering how I could do it better

I would think sterilising the soil is a bit extreme. There are good pathogens as well as bad in soil and sterilising will just turn it into an inert substance won't it? When I was a kid my Uncle used to have us burning piles of couch grass encrusted 'sods' The soil actually changed colour to red, but he didn't grow any bigger leeks than anyone else in it.

Where's that "Life's too short.....! thread??

I believe people use microwaves or conventional ovens but you need to get the timing right to destroy the bits you don't want but preserve the bits you do. I'm with Veggie on the 'life's too short' view.

I can't say its something I've ever thought to do.

The way I look at it is............if you were sowing seeds directly in the ground, you wouldn't "Sterilise" the soil, so why do it for pots??

Don’t even try. There really are more exciting things you could be doing   .

I tend to buy compost for seed sowing. But if I didn't want to for any reason, I would get some soil that has never grown anything but grass or weeds and keep it warm and light somewhere over winter to try and get as many weed seeds to germinate as possible. A good place to get some soil could be mole hills if you can. I needed some soil to help level off a bit of ground recently and got a wheelbarrow of soil from the mole hills on our lawn.

It is actually soil from molehills that I am referring to there are quite a number of weeds germinating in the soil I have spread out in a tray, sitting in the greenhouse and as I don't have several months to wait for them all to germinate before making up my baskets, I use soil and compost in them as soil holds the moisture longer than compost, also I don't want to use moisture retaining gell, the growing medium in the baskets will be reused for various things next year and though they are said to be safe, I really don't want to use them

If you want the baskets to retain moisture, you can get seaweed-based moisture-retaining stuff that's presumably biodegradable. I have some, but I haven't tried it enough to be sure if it works or not. I guess I'll be adding it to my hanging baskets this year, though!

I think this is the stuff I bought, though it's out of stock at the moment:

https://www.organiccatalogue.com/product...00g_783184