Cardboard in the Garden - Rules?

I have a ton of moving boxes, and some of the boxes from some IKEA shelves. The cardboard is your basic brown kraft style cardboard - nothing fancy - with black print on it.

Logically, this should be good to shred down and add to the garden bed to help attract and feed the worms. Is there anything about cardboard that I should worry about? There is no color print or glossy on these boxes (I stay away from both for garden work).

Basically, is there any reason this shouldn't work?

I think it would work fine -- only thing I would consider is that cardboard is a carbon and during decomposing will take nitrogen from the surroundings unless balanced, manure with it would work fine -- or if your garden soil is already highly nitrogenous it may not be an issue at all........ In the decomposition process, the organisms that "digest" the material balance their diet with what is available, so heavy carbonaceous additions can temporarily take up nitrogen that you would want to be going to your plants, if not balanced.

Also cardboard boxes broken down make fabulous weedkiller/mulch material, so if you have any areas with stuff growing you would like to be gone, laying cardboard over and covering with growing medium is a great method.

The beds I've created all have started with Hay bales. Basically, I'm wanting to add the shred to the decomposed hay once the plants are out, and definitely balance with manure (found a source of bunny manure - yay!).

Thank you for the answer! I didn't realize that the cardboard could suck out the nitrogen. I'll make sure to add extra manure and bloodmeal when the time comes.

yer welcome. ;-)

Pull off the packing tape first. It will usually be made either of plastic (the clear kind) or have fiberglass threads embedded in it. It's a lot easier to pull it off before you lay down the cardboard than after. Speaking from experience here.

.....and while you are using cardboard as a mulch go ahead and lay whole segments of newspaper under it for the same fine results.....moisture moderator, temperature moderator that water and oxygen can penetrate. Anything just laying on the soil will not tie up significant amounts of nitrogen........yet a mini composting zone about a quarter to half an inch thick is immediately created between the soil and the paper. The worms will come and return more nitrogen than the mulch will tie up. They will then aeriate your soil and spread their goodness and it will run down their passage-ways with the impending rains to right where you need it.

Yeah, losing the tape was one of the first things when flattening the moving boxes that are to be part of the garden.

Next question, because this whole newspaper/cardboard thing is new to me: I have a bunch of haybales that are already planted in (bale gardening). If I seed the shred with some nitrogen to counter any nitrogen leaching, I should be able to stuff it between the bales, too, right? I'm thinking blood meal, since it's a slow nitrogen source and thus, should not burn any roots that are trying to grow.

Cotton seed meal is good in Houston too and sometimes cheaper than blood meal.
Debbie

When I was running a thousand square feet of garden I bought a bag of low number organic fertilizer like 4-2-4, a bag of alfalfa meal and a bag of azromite for trace minerals about every other year. This suplimented a ton of compost that I estimated in weight each year.

I could use bunches of paper and cardboard as mulch. I spiked up the ground with my additives both under new mulch and on top where the mulch carried over from previous years. I've more less done this for fifty and a few years of gardening. I stopped tilling years and years ago.

How are you going to shred the cardboard? I have a bunch and I want to start a compost pile. Just learning how so I can get started on it soon.

I do not shred the cardboard or the newsprint.... nor do I put it in the compost. I use it for between the rows layered mulch.

Keeping in mind that I have about 15 Ikea boxes from various bits of furniture that we put together, and about 200 moving boxes, from our move, we are looking to use the cardboard for anything we can. Part of it was used as a grass inhibitor/mulch where I put down a bunch of hay bales for the bale gardens. The rest is sitting in the garage, waiting for me to do something productive with it.

Hence the shredding as well as using it as DocGipe has been talking about.

I got myself a seriously strong shredder at Office Depot. It cost $85 on sale (half price, day after Christmas thing), and cuts through cardboard like butter. It's made by Fellows, the PS-79Ci. I cannot say enough good things about it as a shredder.

I do have to tear the cardboard down to a size that will shred, but that's quite theraputic, so it's fun.

How safe is cottonseed meal for organic gardens? I thought they sprayed cotton with all sorts of nasty chemicals....

Cotton seed meal is one of the products made by Espoma and sold in the south. The key word is seed.

Aha! But wouldn't the seed be affected since the plant generating it is sprayed?

Espoma's headquarters are in the next town, actually. I did a portrait of the founder for them. Funny old world.

Is bloodmeal from animals fed antibiotics and GMO altered food more organic?

I don't use bloodmeal either, but I know what you mean.

As far as that goes--the process used to make paper and cardboard are about as environmentally devastating as they come.

Well, yeah -- but one factor is, how much toxic material ends up in the substance you are putting on the garden. In plain paper and cardboard, not much to none. But cottonseed meal, well, my understanding is that cotton is a heavily chemical-supported crop, and also that substances tend to end up in seeds. In animals they end up in fat; in plants they end up in the seed..... I do not know if anyone has ever done tests on actual cottonseed meal for stray contents we might not want, but I tend to avoid it if there are options available that have less likelihood of having absorbed toxins.

The healthy patch will largely if not completely consume the air born and hitch hiking elements we do not like. There is hardly anything that does not have some undesireable contents these days. Sure I try to avoid the major items but I do not think most of us can completely run free of all toxins. Sure enough that healthy patch will try to clean itself and do just that given time and reasonable care not to use some things we need not put up with.

I agree -- it is always a judgment call deciding what helps the most. ;-)

I would still rather use blood meal than Miracle Grow's green nitrogen salts. Then we find that alfalfa meal is nearly as good as blood meal yet it likely has been sprayed with chemicals for spittle bugs and laced with manufactured fertilizers for fast growth. My yard grasses are about the only thing I use that is absolutely organic. Most of what I bring in has something hitch hiking with it. Not much maybe but it is nearly impossible to get absolutely clean anything anymore.

I hear that! We do our best, eh?