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Cardboard in garden


How to prep your garden with cardboard

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Food & Water

By Heifer International

May 7, 2019

Last Updated: October 3, 2019

Why use cardboard in a garden? It’s a great mulch, and prevents weeds from sprouting. Decomposing cardboard adds organic matter to the soil, improving your garden’s drainage and boosting nutrient levels. Earthworms flock to the dark, moist, safe habitat cardboard provides, leaving behind a nutrient-rich layer of worm castings–free fertilizer! A layer of cardboard left in place for a season smothers out grass and weeds, creating a ready-made garden plot, no tilling required. It’s free, and you can feel great about reusing a product that would otherwise go to waste.

Break down packing boxes and remove any tape or labels.

Save your boxes next time you move, or lay claim to a friend's boxes when they move, because packing boxes are perfect for this project. 

Mow the area where you want the garden to go.

Then, place cardboard on top, overlapping the edges a few inches so that weeds don’t spring up in the cracks.

Hose everything down with water.

The moisture keeps the cardboard in place and is important for both gas exchange and microbial life in the soil.

Mulch

Improve soil fertility even more by layering mulches or organic matter on top: compost, shredded leaves, grass clippings, straw, you name it! One method is to put down a layer of compost, followed by mulch hay on top of that.

Sit back and let the magic happen.

The decomposition time will vary based on soil biology. The more microbes and earthworms, the faster the cardboard breaks down.

Come planting time, if the cardboard is still there underneath the mulch, leave it all in place and simply cut a hole through it to access the soil surface so you can seed or transplant as usual. If you’re looking to install new garden space, start a few months or even an entire season ahead of time to kill the sod or grass you are converting to a garden. If you decide to give this a try, be ready to forever replace “it tastes like cardboard” with “it grew from cardboard and tastes great to boot!” Happy growing!

Story by Elizabeth Joseph, photos from Rutland Farm in Massachusetts.  

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How To Use Cardboard In The Garden

Home › Special Gardens › Organic Gardens

Organic Gardens

By: Bonnie L. Grant, Certified Urban Agriculturist

Image by Tina M

If you have recently moved, there is something fun you can do with all those cardboard boxes besides fill up your recycle bin. Reusing cardboard for the garden provides compostable material, kills pesky weeds and develops a bumper crop of earthworms. Cardboard in the garden will also kill lawn grass and help you get a new bed ready for veggies, ornamentals or whatever you want to grow. Continue reading for more cardboard garden ideas.

Reusing Cardboard for the Garden

When you think about it, cardboard is just a form of paper and comes from a natural source, trees. As a natural source, it will break down and release carbon into the soil. Garden upcycling with cardboard has many more benefits, however. You can use it as planters, to start a garden path, mulch a prepared bed, start a new bed and much more.

It is important what type of cardboard you use in your landscape. Any cardboard that is not heavily printed, has no tape, no shiny finish, is unwaxed and plain brown is considered clean and okay to use. Some tapes will breakdown, such as the brown paper tape with strings through it. Otherwise, keep it simple and only use the basic type of cardboard or you will be pulling tape and plastic finish out of your new areas.

If you are doing a layered or lasagna garden, make sure to moisten the cardboard first before topping it with organic material or mulch. There will be more rapid breakdown when using cardboard in the garden in this manner.

Cardboard Gardening Ideas

If you can think it, it can probably be done. Garden upcycling with cardboard not only repurposes refuse but is useful in many ways. The most common of the cardboard garden ideas is to use it to start a new bed, called sheet mulching. It doesn’t matter if the area has weeds or grass but do remove large rocks and other items you wouldn’t want in a planting space.

Lay the cardboard down on top of the area and moisten well. Use those rocks or any other heavy items to hold the cardboard down to the ground. Keep the area moist. A good time to do this is in fall. By spring you will have killed the weeds and the grass, and the area will be ready to till.

Layered beds will become super rich and nutrient dense if you use cardboard. It is similar to the method above, only you cover the cardboard with mulch or compost. In spring, simply till the area and you will be ready to plant.

Or, perhaps, you are an antsy gardener who wants to get going immediately once temperatures are warmed. Prepare your vegetable beds in fall and then cover them with cardboard to keep weeds from filling the areas.

Other Ways to Use Cardboard in the Garden

Lay cardboard down where you want a path and cover with pavers. Over time, the cardboard will melt into the soil but it will kill any undesirables under the pavers in the meantime.

Shred the cardboard and add it as an important carbon source to your compost bin.

Another idea for reusing cardboard for the garden is to place pieces of it around plants in areas that are prone to weeds. It will reduce weeds drastically and eventually compost into the soil.

For a cute gift idea, have the kids paint smaller cardboard boxes and fill them with soil and colorful flowers. It would make a special gift for grandma or even their teacher.

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how to do it right, pros and cons

Who remembers those times when newspapers were not only read, but also widely used for various household purposes - smoked fish, for example, to wrap or something else? Today, many people are concerned about the safety of the environment and products. Newspapers and waste paper in general in this regard also cause concern. As part of the site format, I propose to understand a purely garden issue: mulching with cardboard and newspapers - is it harmful?


Is it worth covering the beds with paper? nine0005

Planting mulching has long been recognized as an efficient way of land management: under a layer of mulch, the optimal microclimate for plants is maintained, they need less watering - and weeds are not so disturbing. It is clear that organic mulch (straw, hay, wood chips, bark, sawdust, compost) will bring double benefits to the beds - it will protect the plantings and add nutrients. And what about waste paper? It seems to be organic too: paper, despite the appearance of a mass of synthetic polymeric materials, is still produced from wood pulp...

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Terrible and terrible lead

Many summer residents are stopped from using newsprint and other paper as mulch material by the fear that the waste paper contains substances harmful to plants or the person himself. Particularly lead. However, as it turned out, lead is not used either in the production of paper itself or in printing ink. Where do "lead ears" grow from?


Lead is not used in the production of the paper itself or in the printing ink

How newspapers are printed

There may have been some presence of this element in books and newspapers before the advent of computer typesetting and modern printing presses. Then the printed matrix was recruited from cast letters, at first - separate ones. Then the linotype appeared - a string-casting machine, where the typed lines were cast entirely from a typographical alloy, which was based on lead. Lead fumes made printing work harmful, and it is possible that traces of lead dust remained on the newspaper strip or the page of the book from the types worn off during printing. Today, linotypes have migrated from printing houses to museums. nine0006

It is likely that the statement about the presence of lead in printed products is a common Internet fake, the mass of which appears in the bowels of the Network and multiplies uncontrollably. Because I did not come across any substantiated evidence of the presence of lead or other toxic substances in newspapers and books. After all, the harmfulness of production does not mean an unequivocal danger of the products produced: hardly anyone will argue about the harmfulness of the steel industry, but no one is afraid of metal products. nine0006


Types for letterpress printing from printing alloy

What printing ink is made of

The composition of printing ink itself has not changed much since the time of Gutenberg (the German pioneer who created the progressive method of book printing in 1450). For black - use soot, mixed in a special way with soap (or its chemical analogues) and typographic drying oil. Synthetic drying oils based on petroleum products or acrylic resins are currently used. By the way, Gutenberg did use lead as an additive for paint: he experimented with its composition so that it would be resistant and adhere well to a metal printing board. That is why his 42-line Bible still, 566 years later, is distinguished by "blue-black, slightly gleaming text strips that seem to have been printed only yesterday." But lead in paint, even in those days, was a rare exception. nine0006


Fragment of the Gutenberg Bible. Photo from rusneb. ru

Newspapers, on the other hand, have much less value: they are designed for one-time short-term use. Therefore, their production is as cheap as possible - after a while, newsprint turns yellow, and the print fades.

Color printing uses organic and mineral pigments that may contain zinc, copper, aluminum or their alloys. They are in the newspaper in very small quantities and cannot harm the plants. nine0006

Sanitary regulations

Old periodicals do not appear to be dangerous: no sanitary regulations were found to regulate the safety of printing ink or paper. The drafters of GOSTs and sanitary regulations are more concerned about the quality of the paper itself (thickness, density, degree of whiteness) and font height, sizes, kernings and other printing factors responsible for the convenience of reading printed text and the least fatigue of the reader's eyes. And perhaps summer residents should be more afraid of the proximity of the road to the garden than waste paper, which in the form of books, newspapers, office papers and packaging always and everywhere surrounds us. nine0006


No health regulations for the safety of old newspapers found

Newspaper mulch: a professional approach

A summer resident usually considers newspapers and cardboard as mulch in the form of sheet material - spread under a bush or on a bed in one or more layers, press down with boards or stones.


Most often, summer residents use newspapers as mulch in the form of sheet material. On the left is a photo of Ekaterina, on the right is a photo of Svetlana

But there is also a very professional approach to using old newspapers. Waste paper mulch is used in hydroseeding technology: ground press, hydrogel, seeds, fertilizers, soil improvers and a green dye indicator are mixed with water and applied to the prepared site using equipment similar to a plastering machine. After a few hours, the composition dries in the form of a crust, forming a mulch layer that protects the soil from erosion, and the seeds from being washed away and eaten by birds. It creates optimal conditions for grass germination - moisture is retained. After 4-10 days, the grass begins to sprout, and in a month there will already be a wonderful emerald grass carpet in the wasteland. nine0006


Liquid turf

Liquid turf technology was originally designed for large areas and hard-to-reach areas. For example - to quickly create a lawn on the slopes around freshly built roads, road junctions, on the territory of commissioned houses. But today it is quite possible to order a quick lawn for small private estates and even purchase materials and equipment for self-use. Or just buy only newspaper mulch: it is sold in crushed form, packaged in bags. nine0006


Hydroseeding technology. Photo from gazony.com

Other ways to use newspapers and cardboard

There are many other ways to use waste paper for a gardener. Let's go over the list of reuse opportunities for reading newspapers and cardboard packaging.

  • Homemade cups for seedlings from newspapers.
  • Cardboard as the base of a high bed - to prevent the growth of perennial weeds on the surface.
  • Development of virgin areas without digging: a layer of cardboard is laid directly on the ground, fertile soil is poured over it, into which seeds are sown or seedlings (tubers) of potatoes are planted. The effect is the same: perennial weeds remain under the cardboard and die in a year or two, turning into humus.
  • Protection of trunks and skeletal branches of seedlings from gnaws and sunburn - an alternative to whitewashing. The trunks are wrapped in cardboard, and the branches are wrapped in “bandages” made of newsprint.

Protecting the plant stem with cardboard. Photo from the site diy.obi.ru

  • Winter shelters for plants.
  • Waste paper (except glossy laminated magazines) - for compost.
  • Shredded newspaper, according to earthworm breeders, is a good basis for creating favorable conditions in a vermicomposter: it regulates humidity and at the same time becomes food. A sheet of newspaper, placed on top of the surface of the substrate with this living creature, will give shelter from the sun's rays and prevent evaporation. nine0084
  • Cardboard as a building material is a good insulation and vapor-permeable membrane.
  • Waste paper is an excellent raw material for creative projects.

Paper waste - safely into the compost!

Using waste paper, we not only get a lot of useful and free things for ourselves, but also benefit our planet. Indeed, for the production of one ton of paper, from 3.5 to 5 tons of wood is needed, and recycling can reduce resource consumption.

Do you use paper and cardboard in your country house? Share your ways to reuse this kind of material.

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  • Why is it important to mulch the soil?
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Use of cardboard in the garden and in the garden

Gardeners have different views on the use of cardboard, but some manufacturers can make something what can be called blank cardboard. These are, as a rule, simple boxes, unfastened with various staples and adhesive tape, without labels and with a minimum area of ​​printed images on the outside. The main components of corrugated cardboard are relatively soft. Brown corrugated board appears to be the least processed paper product. Therefore, it will have the lowest quality, but also the least amount of chemicals compared to white, glossy, waxed or otherwise coated cardboard and paper. nine0006

There are many ways to use cardboard effectively in your garden. This method is especially effective if you have acquired a new site, but it has been in a semi-abandoned or abandoned state for a long time. In this case, one of your main problems will be overgrown weeds. Bringing them out overnight is almost impossible, and daily weeding and digging up individual bushes will take too much useful time.

photo: pixabay.com

The strategy in this scenario will be relatively simple. Try as much as possible, but in the shortest possible time, to clear the surface of the earth from plants. Then, cover the freed areas with sheets of cardboard. Lack of light will eventually cause the weeds to either die or be in a very weakened state. After a while, you will only have to remove a few surviving plants. nine0006

In addition to this method, I would like to add that using cardboard sheets of various shapes, you can free any land in your garden. For example, you can set aside the central part of the lawn for planting a couple of tomato bushes or some other plants. You do not have to once again stomp and dig up the entire area in order to release a small piece of land.

Using cardboard as mulch means that it must be damp. So plan to cover it with compost or other material, especially if you live in a dry climate. nine0006

The next thing to consider is that the remnants of packaging elements, such as adhesive tape, should be removed from the boxes. But, in a dry state, this is problematic. Therefore, you have two options either to wait for rain, or to slightly moisten and clean the cardboard without waiting for nature to intervene.

Do not forget that a cardboard box is, first of all, a box. They can be used as mini-greenhouses for a small number of plants. This method is effective towards the end of the season, for example, when protecting parsley from the cold. Cardboard boxes can easily protect your plants from cold winds, extending your harvest time to weeks. nine0006 photo: pixabay.com

The last method of application described by us today may not work in all regions, since it greatly depends on the external conditions and the insects that live in your region.

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