I’m celebrating Boxing Day in a new way this year – I’m putting all the cardboard boxes saved up from Shipping Month, aka December, to use in my Permaculture garden, by making sheet mulch.
Google sheet mulch and Permaculture. (For those not in the know, Permaculture is a fairly recent term for cultivating an edible landscape that establishes positively reinforcing relationships between water, soil, insects, microbes, sun, etc…for the purpose of sustainably and organically feeding its designing human.)
Sheet mulches are an easy way to ‘compost in place’, delivering all the water-borne yummies to the plants instead of under the compost pile. Design-wise, sheet mulching also avoids the not-so-Neighborhood-Association-Friendly look of compost piles, so it’s a tricky way to subvert the negative effects of suburban sprawl – grow a food landscape!
How the cardboard boxes fit in: They’re the weed suppressant. I am making mine according to the directions in the book Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway. I’ve done a couple sheet mulch beds already, and the blueberry and quince bushes seem very grateful. You’ll need to make a collection of boxes, as well as manure/finished compost, and a high-nitrogen additive like bloodmeal, or cottonseedmeal.
First, I slash the existing vegetation to the ground. Then I soak the ground (from my rain barrel of course). Then a thin layer of manure or meal to attract the earthworms from wherever they come. Then the cardboard. (Hemenway says you can use 1/4″ of newspaper, and some say the results are better with paper – but I read my local online, so I just have cardboard.) Overlap the pieces 6″ so the weeds won’t wiggle through. Now soak the cardboard so it won’t blow away. Sprinkle another layer of high-nitrogen meal, then cover with 8-12″ of bulk mulch. I use the leaves that just fell from my hickory trees, and try to fish out as many nuts as I can for eating. I dampen the leaves to keep them stable and start the decomposition process, and add a bit more meal as I build this thick layer. Then the compost goes on, and finally, a ‘pretty’ mulch, like pinestraw or bark chips, for Neighbor Approval.
The final advantage to sheet mulching is that then the whole landscape is an opportunity to compost kitchen scraps – if you don’t have a Bokashi bucket or a wormery. Just lift up the corner of a mulch and tuck under those apple cores. I have not seen animals digging my mulch yet – well, except for the earthworms, who are very welcome.
(Photo by the author, under her plum tree.)
A couple of helpful hints:
1 – I don’t believe in Xmas, so I get no cardboard boxes. If people send me presents, they get an angry response next time I see them. When I do get them I take them to the homeless shelter on my bicycle. I have 20 homeless people living with me. Currently. And they need them more than the plants.
2 – Weeds are beautiful. I don’t believe in weed suppressant. If you don’t like them, just dig them out with a hoe. Why are you afraid of weeds?
3 – Why waste valuable wood on a rain barrel? I store all my water in plastic jugs I find dumpster diving. You wouldn’t BELIEVE what people throw out.
4 – I sure hope you don’t have a personal computer at home. If you’ve been reading greenbuildingelements as closely as I have, you would know that the electricity you’re wasting reading your ONLINE newspapers is tremendous. Do what I do. Bicycle to your local library. Yell at the librarians to turn off most of the lights in the building. Yell at them to turn off all unused computers, and quickly read your stuff online. BTW, the library still has newspapers, you know!
5 – If you must decorate your lawn with eco-friendly apparatus, please don’t use cardboard boxes. They are very tacky looking and encourage rats. Trust me, I tried this once. I was trying to add some additional homeless shelters to my property. I had to borrow my neighbor’s snakes just to get rid of the vermin. A more visually pleasing solution is rusted automobile parts. What you do is clear the grass and weeds in a nice 10 x 10 patch and build vertical towers of them.
–BC
A couple of helpful hints:
1 – I don’t believe in Xmas, so I get no cardboard boxes. If people send me presents, they get an angry response next time I see them. When I do get them I take them to the homeless shelter on my bicycle. I have 20 homeless people living with me. Currently. And they need them more than the plants.
2 – Weeds are beautiful. I don’t believe in weed suppressant. If you don’t like them, just dig them out with a hoe. Why are you afraid of weeds?
3 – Why waste valuable wood on a rain barrel? I store all my water in plastic jugs I find dumpster diving. You wouldn’t BELIEVE what people throw out.
4 – I sure hope you don’t have a personal computer at home. If you’ve been reading greenbuildingelements as closely as I have, you would know that the electricity you’re wasting reading your ONLINE newspapers is tremendous. Do what I do. Bicycle to your local library. Yell at the librarians to turn off most of the lights in the building. Yell at them to turn off all unused computers, and quickly read your stuff online. BTW, the library still has newspapers, you know!
5 – If you must decorate your lawn with eco-friendly apparatus, please don’t use cardboard boxes. They are very tacky looking and encourage rats. Trust me, I tried this once. I was trying to add some additional homeless shelters to my property. I had to borrow my neighbor’s snakes just to get rid of the vermin. A more visually pleasing solution is rusted automobile parts. What you do is clear the grass and weeds in a nice 10 x 10 patch and build vertical towers of them.
–BC
Mr. Congo’s comments are my first real evidence of the Hollywood writer’s strike. If you can’t say something nice, keep your fingers off the keyboard. I found this sheet mulching post to be informative and very clearly written. I hope you motivate more people to try it.
Mr. Congo’s comments are my first real evidence of the Hollywood writer’s strike. If you can’t say something nice, keep your fingers off the keyboard. I found this sheet mulching post to be informative and very clearly written. I hope you motivate more people to try it.
I found Billy Bongo’s creative writing piece very amusing.
I found Billy Bongo’s creative writing piece very amusing.