What I Found Out: Composting Bleach-free Cardboard
I've been saving unbleached paper towel and toilet paper rolls. Everytime a roll is finished, it goes into a bag instead of the recycling. Over the winter, I accumulated a huge bag of such cardboard--about 3' wide and 4' tall. Plus a second bag about a third that size.
Four of my raised beds need organic material, and I was running out of material like leaves. Oh, I could have gone down to my bamboo forest which is loaded with great organic material, but the mosquitoes are thick as thieves and even mosquito repellent doesn't do the job there, so I'm trying to find other materials. It's so important to have that organic material in the soil because otherwise the water just washes straight through. We have a drought here in NJ, so every bit of water saving one can do counts.
But how to shred the cardboard? A web search revealed that plenty of people compost this kind of cardboard, but it appears they actually tear it up themselves. I wasn't about to engage in that much manual labor, so I thought about how I could get these cardboard rolls down to small bits.
The decision was to soak the rolls in water and then use the weedwacker on them.
I filled a few buckets of water half full and put in the rolls. As you can see in the pic below, the cardboard began to soften them almost immediately.
After soaking a bit, I put them in an old plastic tub and used my weedwacker on them. On the bottom of the tub you see the shredded cardboard that resulted from using the weedwacker:
I then transferred the chopped up cardboard to my raised bed, where I'll rake it to spread it around, and then add chopped leaves and whatever other compostable materials I can find.
The soil in these beds is organic and comes mixed with compost. The nursery that delivered it told me that it wouldn't have organic matter and I would have to add that on my own.
Here's what I learned:
1) the bits of cardboard will spatter all over the protector shield of the weedwacker, so have an old rag handy to immediately clean off the cardboard. Otherwise it hardens and would require re-wetting to get it off.
2. The cardboard softens quickly in water, so you can accomplish this task in one work session rather than having to wait for the next step. In all, this job took 45".
3. I was a little surprised at the small yield of material for the amount of cardboard I had. When all was said and done, it did not give me a great deal of organic material to put into the mix. Still, it's a better use of it than what is done in the present state of recycling, so I'll do it periodically.
= new reply since forum marked as read
This shows the size of the cardboard bits a little better than the photo in my OP:
Comfrey. This plant is an amazing helper in the garden. It is an excellent organic fertilizer, a compost accelerator, pollination center for bees and well why not it’s a medicinal.
We have five raised beds, about 20 grow bags and various squashes planted in ground along with the expected raspberries and strawberries. And a side project growing a grove of elderberry bushes. Coming this spring building my wife a greenhouse.
All are fertilized with only comfrey used in various ways depending on where it’s being used. We make a liquid comfrey fertilizer by soaking the leaves in a bucket of water for a couple weeks. We use the leavers straight from the plant and lay them directly on the ground around the other veggie plants for mulch and fertilizer together. In the fall when closing up the beds we lay comfrey leave on the ground, cover with soil to ready the beds for the spring.
I also grow organic cannabis inside in a grow tent. To fertilize inside, I chop up the comfrey leaves, dry them and use the resulting “crumble” as a side dressing.
In addition to all that of course it adds biomass to the beds and compost pile. If you go to purchase comfrey make positively sure you get the Russian strain, it’s not the invasive kind.
https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/what-is-comfrey-and-how-to-grow-it/
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/comfrey-plant-guide
Did you know milk is beneficial in the garden?
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/milk-fertilizer.htm
