HEChicken
Attractive To Bees
On a previous thread, I discussed my use of VERY thick cardboard last year to try to kill the weeds in my new garden patch. This thread is an update….
On Sunday DH and I pulled up the cardboard, so that we can get the tiller in. Underneath we found that in places it seemed to have worked but in other places, the weeds were still there - perhaps dead, perhaps dormant. The cardboard itself was wet and heavy (and therefore difficult to move) due to all the snow that sat on top of it for days. Underneath, in some places it was also damp but in others, very dry. In some places the dampness had led to the bottom layer of the cardboard starting to decompose and when we tried to pull it up, that layer stayed on top of the soil. We decided to leave it there to be tilled in.
One thing we noticed is that the earthworms really appreciated the addition of the cardboard to the garden. The corrugations are the perfect size for worms to crawl into and they had used them as shelter from the elements, keeping the worms much closer to the surface than I would normally expect at this time of year. The worm castings that were adhered to the bottom layer of the cardboard in many places were also very pleasing, and we knocked as much of that off into the garden before carrying off each piece of cardboard, as we could.
I think I would, overall, give this a 3.5 star rating. It wasn't an overwhelming success but nor was it a failure. It was a lot of work both laying the cardboard out and pulling it back up. Now it is the windy season and our stack of cardboard is getting blown around a bit, so we'll have to find a way to weight it down to prevent that. DH would like to replace some sheets of it around the perimeter of the garden after the tiller has been in, to help prevent grass growing in sideways. Would I do it again? Probably not. But would I advise someone else NOT to do it? Again, probably not.
On Sunday DH and I pulled up the cardboard, so that we can get the tiller in. Underneath we found that in places it seemed to have worked but in other places, the weeds were still there - perhaps dead, perhaps dormant. The cardboard itself was wet and heavy (and therefore difficult to move) due to all the snow that sat on top of it for days. Underneath, in some places it was also damp but in others, very dry. In some places the dampness had led to the bottom layer of the cardboard starting to decompose and when we tried to pull it up, that layer stayed on top of the soil. We decided to leave it there to be tilled in.
One thing we noticed is that the earthworms really appreciated the addition of the cardboard to the garden. The corrugations are the perfect size for worms to crawl into and they had used them as shelter from the elements, keeping the worms much closer to the surface than I would normally expect at this time of year. The worm castings that were adhered to the bottom layer of the cardboard in many places were also very pleasing, and we knocked as much of that off into the garden before carrying off each piece of cardboard, as we could.
I think I would, overall, give this a 3.5 star rating. It wasn't an overwhelming success but nor was it a failure. It was a lot of work both laying the cardboard out and pulling it back up. Now it is the windy season and our stack of cardboard is getting blown around a bit, so we'll have to find a way to weight it down to prevent that. DH would like to replace some sheets of it around the perimeter of the garden after the tiller has been in, to help prevent grass growing in sideways. Would I do it again? Probably not. But would I advise someone else NOT to do it? Again, probably not.
