The way in which you designate to get rid of of your cardboard will basically determine how long it will take for it to decompose.
If thrown out with your normal household waste, it could take up to 5 years for it to decompose fully.
However, given a bit of work and the right tools, you can speed up the operation to less than a year and use it in and around your garden.
This helps cut down your carbon footprint, and will even help to care for your plants for years to come.
I came across this on Ezine Articles....interesting!
Introducing an even simpler style of Ayurvedic gardening - YIN
I love the Ayurvedic system as a model of natural gardening... but I'd loathe the purgatory of hand-weeding it. So could this controlled jungle be made labour-free? A clue lies in another Asian country, Japan, home of the fabled no-dig system of Masanobu Fukuoka. This Buddhist visionary showed that rye and barley seed, wrapped in clay pellets, can be broadcast-sown among rice while it is still growing.
Contrary to belief, much rice - 'wild' rice apart - is not grown in water. When the rice is harvested, its stems are spread among the seedling grains as a mulch. As the grains mature, rice is hand-sown among them. When the grain is harvested, its stems are cut and spread as a mulch. As the rice matures, rye and barley are sown again.
And so it goes, in a perpetual cycle - one crop maturing as another is started among it. The roots are left to rot in the soil, the mulch from each crop retains moisture so watering is usually unnecessary, and the soil's fertility renews itself.
It's deceptively simple. But it took Fukuoka 30 years to perfect it and his early experiments wiped out his farm, twice. Suppose we combine both these Asian methods, and add a touch of Western bravura? And produced the ideal scheme for a low maintenance organic garden?
Introducing Yeoman's Improved No-dig system (YIN).
Phase One
In February under cloches, we'd plant broad beans intercropped with radishes, pak choy, aragula (rocket), spinach, early lettuce, peas and carrots. For mulch, we'd use several sheets of newspaper held down with compost and cut holes or slits in it for the seeds or transplants.
Phase Two
By late May, the peas will have grown up the beans and both can be harvested. Any immature pods can be eaten whole like mangetout and the still-growing tips used fresh in salads. As in the Fukuoka method, we leave the roots in the soil and lay back the cut bean and pea stems plus any unwanted spinach foliage as a mulch. Sweet corn transplants are then put in.
Among them we drop French beans (Phaseolus vulgaris, the 'common' bean), maincrop carrots and other roots, plus more lettuce. We ring the plot with transplants of calendula, tagetes, nasturtiums, basil, carraway and other spicy annual herbs. At the end of the rows go space-hogging courgettes, pumpkins and other squash.
Phase Three
In September, all is harvested. We leave the roots in the soil, chop the stems and leaves and lay them back as mulch. In go our winter brassica. Or we might sow Chinese leaves, land cress and aragula (rocket), very thickly, as edible green manures. This is cut in February and laid back as a mulch, whereupon the cycle begins again.
No more, must we lug those stems and leaves to a compost bin, turn it laboriously then haul the wretched stuff back where it came from. Nature doesn't do that! And left where it falls, the mulch should suppress most annual weeds. (All parts of a diseased or suspect plant should be taken up and burnt, of course.)
This simplified version of Ayruvedic gardening not only suppresses weeds and is ecologically efficient. It also saves time and labour!
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/John_Yeoman/576275
Here in the UK the day tempter is 33 degrees and 20 degrees at night.
My red cabbages that I sowed at the end of march are not growing well at all.
I am going to resow and hope for a mild Autumn, they are after all a winter veg.
The Tokyo Olympics are due to get started in a few days and they are already shaping up to be the weirdest in history.
Japanese public do not want the games and have aways been against it since the pandemic started.
An Olympic staff member from Uzbekistan has been accused of raping a Japanese colleague.
Four British and American contractors have been arrested on drugs charges.
A Ugandan weightlifter has 'disappeared', apparently leaving a note saying he had gone to find work in Japan.
Big companies are already assessing whether running commercials that link them to the games is too much of a reputational risk, and Toyota have already announced they will not run TV ads in Japan.
61 new Covid-19 cases have so far been reported from all the people connected to the games, including at least 5 athletes.
There will be no spectators for the live events and winners will have to collect their own medals.
And there are still two days to go before it all starts!
How to take cuttings from Taunton Deane Kale
If you are lucky enough to have a Taunton Dean kale, ( which is a very rare plant) you may wonder how your can make new plants. As this kale does not have flowers and thus cannot grow seeds you have to take cuttings.
New plants can be taken simple by pinching off side shoots that have knobbly ridges on the stem.
Trim the stem and put in a pot of damp compost, within ten days the cutting should peak up and start growing roots which should be ready to plant out with six weeks or so.
Another way of getting new plants is to put the cuttings straight into the ground leaving about two thirds of the stem below the surface of the soil .
This should be done from October till May, then you will have leafy vegetables to eat with hardly any work at all and they should grow and yeild for six to eight years.
You have bugs all over your crops and do not know what to do....Well here is an idea that works for me.
Bugs like yellow, do not know why, but they do.
So, get a board about half of A4 size. The best is thick cardboard or light plywood. You could use a yellow index card or some form of plastic ( frisbee )
Paint it as bright yellow as you can ( water proof paint )
Now you need some sort of sticky substance: Vaseline, honey, old engine oil or a non-drying glue like Tanglefoot ( stuff you paint on trees to stop bugs crawling up the trunks).
Just paint this on your board and hang it in among your plants, you will be surprised how many bugs you will catch
As the boards start to be covered with bugs.Clean off your trap and reapply your sticky stuff.
Use of cardboard in your garden:
Because of Covid-19 there is a huge amount of cardboard about and the question is....what can you do with it?
There are, in the main, three main types of cardboard
Corrugated, which is the main type.
Flat Cardboard which is used for shoe boxes, cereal boxes and the like .
Wax coated cardboard, which is the strongest type and hardest to break down. I use this type as pots for growing flowers but never put it in my compost because it has some form of plastic coating. I find that they will last a year as pots.
The first two types, I tear up and put it in my compost in between the green stuff.
I turn my compost every four to six weeks and find that it breaks down over a year in the main.
Why use seaweed fertiliser:
Very nutrient rich in vitamins, iodine, magnesium, calcium and potassium, to name but a few.
Very easy absorption by the plant.
Seaweed is non-toxic in so far as it does not harm people or animals.
Seaweed as a fertiliser is a great boost for your soil.
Summer Time is here again:
Time to put on your wellies and get on with it.
Weeds and pest will take over your plot, so it is very important that you take charge and plant out the last of your seedling before Summer
spirals out of control. Stop digging and bring out the hoe.
You find your mind full of questions:
Have I planted too much or too little?
Have I used the right variety?
Have I got the right number of tomatoes or beans?
Can I, or indeed, should I squeeze in a little more?
Should I take one more trip to the garden centre?
Oh, the joy of it ! Mid- Summer is gone so we have the harvest to look forward to.
