Jul 20, 2017
Seeds of Solidarity Farmer Ricky Baruc offers his insights on the Cardboard Method, a low-tech, low-maintenance, high-productivity technique to enhance your soil and let you “Grow Food Everywhere!”
Posted: February 11, 2020
Categories: Videos
This year I’m doing basically this method. Covering the garden in newspapers folded just as they come, overlapping them, get them from recycle center already bundled, then covering them with overlapped cardboard, then applying 6″ of mulch, letting this sit fallow for 6 months, then planting. Shoveling the mulch into large molasses tubs we take to recycle center costs nothing. If they use their front end loader to load into a trailer there’s a small fee. Since we have no trailer we bring our tubs, shovel mulch into them, then heave ho them into the back of SUV. Takes a bit longer to get all the mulch needed to cover area in garden, but that’s ok. Got my first section done yesterday; newspaper, cardboard, mulch. I’ve got to catch folks that have come in their trucks to dump their cardboard at the recycle center. “May I have your cardboard?” “Oh sure,” they say. Just have to hang around the center for a bit then when a truck or car pulls into the building area where the cardboard conveyor machine is I quickly get over there and rescue this cardboard, and they are happy to give it to me.
The mulch comes from the recycle center as well; huge mountain of it already in the process of decomposing. The mulch decomposes making the crud soil we have supple and full of life, along with the decomposing newspaper & cardboard.
AWESOME Katie!!!! would you consider taking and sharing pics here as your garden progresses?
Katie, what about the INK in the newspaper?
From what I can tell there are mixed views on newspaper. Some say the ink used to have lead in it, but many have switched to soy ink which then leads to the GMO soy concern issue, etc.. I do remove the slick advertising inserts.
The newspaper adds another block from the coastal Bermuda grass that is cattle feed in this area. Good for livestock but not for the human growing a garden.
Hell, even the soil sounds good enough to eat..Bet those veggies are delicious.
Something told me not to burn yesterday. The life of a pile of cardboard has just been given new purpose, today!
I love intuition. 🙂
YAY !!! I have a lot of cardboard (from the move back to ND) I will be using some but I plan to container garden as well due to the amount of moisture we have here…expecting floods again this Spring.
This is an excellent video. Watch it when you can but in the meantime check out the comparison of two fields after a 13 inch rainfall…….start at the 20 minute 20 second mark wow!