Cardboard as Mulch - Straight to the Point

so we're next to the straw bale garden here and the squash the winter squash that we've got growing as well as the melons here doing very very well we got the irrigation system here now this bed here was foul we left it alone strictly because we knew that these vines were going to and we're going to grow over in this area so what I need to do here I don't need two vines to be smothered by the weeds here's what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the weed eater here completely mow this down flat remove the irrigation system and then take cardboard and basically sheet it put it on top to some other out the weeds so the vines can grow over top of the cardboard and we don't have the the weeds to fight with but we'll show you that as we get to it so I'm just going to start winging this down you can bring a lawnmower in here just going to be easier at the weed here and then we'll start laying the cardboard down and that's going to be the best best thing if you had burlap that might work as well but the cardboard is going to smother them out some other out more than anything okay so I got that pretty much done now right here you can see a burlap sack row this is a walk path similar to the walk path that here that's there now burlap sacks work really good but they're only good for about a year six months they start breaking down so if you have a lot of available burlap sacks from your local coffee roaster you don't want to buy them that most Roasters will give them away they have a surplus of them but what I'm going to do is I'm going to mulch with the cardboard this entire spot here even on top of the burlap sacks because these vines the intentions are the vines are going to grow all the way over these potatoes will get removed and then we'll have some turnips and rutabagas and beets beans whatever something that bed there but initially here we're going to work in covering this with the cardboard we've got a above-ground irrigation system here I'm going to leave that as the water penetrates the cardboard I'll begin to absorb it in and kind of hold it down even better and it'll break down and do just like you would underneath a raised bed so just a couple guidelines you want to follow when working with cardboard has a sheet mulch or is a weed barrier about two layers thick is probably a good starting point you would go one based on how much extra I have here I may go one may go two and you want to remove all the tape that you can the clear plastic tape because that is not going to break down the cardboard will eventually vanish here in the soil tape will stay present because it's a an oil-based material so we're just wanting to lay these down the best we can just kind of put them kind of start back here to I'm going to leave these leaks up for a little bit while longer ink on a cardboard not really a concern because it's a lot of a soy-based ink it's not a petroleum-based ink so I'm just going to put all this together and then we'll put our final will get put it all together and then we'll do one final step alright so I've got the cardboard laid down what would I hurt had available we did one layer of cardboard and you can see there's some gaps here from where the flaps were when we get more cardboard we can layer another layer you could also at this point come in and put ave a heavy layer of dry grass clippings on this you want to dry grass clippings otherwise if you put wets here you're going to start molding problems chemical-free we see grass clippings you use a couple you know an inch or so good maybe a foot of straw would be another thing now we got the irrigation system in here it's above ground spring and on our squash and that can introduce powdery mildew but if you water them early in the morning and allow the plants to have adequate time to dry out and they're not going to bed or getting dark when they're wet that's where the powdery mildew can persist and start developing so we'll keep an eye on that with the system here it'll start watering down the cardboard and holding it down you can also bring rocks or other material to how to hold it down but works really looks really good I got to take the Green Hubbard squash here and put it back over here now another thing that you'll notice at least on some squashes you see right here you'll see roots started to develop that's as totally normal has these vines and it's more prevalent on pumpkins and on Hubbard squash sure and some other thing other other winter squashes this will start pulling nutrients from the soil so what we've done here is we create a barrier between that plant and the soil but if we put the water to it and allow it to rain the plant will be able to pierce through the cardboard and reach the nutrients below so that's not a terrible thing so don't worry about that but it's going to look real nice here as these plants you're going to be able to see the plants be able to see the fruit to start to grow and try to gently train these to grow in the direction that you want them to and they'll start coming over this way so using cardboard as a mulch works very well at any stage of the garden especially in this type of application for more information please visit the Wisconsin vegetable gardener com

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Views: 134,098

Rating: 4.7564869 out of 5

Keywords: strainght to the point, weed control

Id: I4ZB_JdZ2G8

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2016