Cardboard is more valuable than gold to any urban farmer . It ’s productive in atomic number 6 , has dozens of uses , and when flatten , boxes can be stored in a comparatively small-scale place . To get your mitt on a bounty of cardboard , call local position , school , or even make an other morning sojourn to the grocery entrepot while they are stocking shelves .
Here is a leaning of the many way we used cardboard on our urban homestead in Baltimore . When putting any of these labor into practice , be sure to use composition board without gloss or dye , and murder any taping or toughie .
Fun For Rabbits
During our prison term raise urban livestock , we breed several American Chinchilla rabbits for manure , pelt and meat . One of my concerns while we owned therabbitswas our very special amount of outer space . As an ethical creature owner , I wanted to see to it that our rabbits were well-chosen and goodly . Cardboard was the answer !
Every few 24-hour interval , I put a fresh cardboard box into each rabbit cage . The box allow sempiternal hours of amusement and recitation as the rabbits dug , nibbled and tossed the box around . They spent much of their time sleeping in the boxes , as well . Because the animals were in wire cage , the composition board provided valuable bed clothing and solace . As an additional bonus , the cardboard ordinarily pull in the lapin urine and manure . We used the soiled boxes to mulch our garden over the wintertime to add lots of endearing fertilizer .
Biodegradable Mulch
Sheet mulchinggarden bed — aka lasagna gardening — is an incredibly in force permaculture technique to block weeds and promote healthy soil . Our very first step when make our urban farm was lay down a wrangle of cardboard then treat with compost . For my next garden , I plan to duplicate this technique , laying out severallasagna bedsand let them to decay for several months before I start turn .
Garden Walkways
To obturate weeds and build walkways for our urban farm , we modified the sheet mulching proficiency . alternatively of order down compost on top our run-in of composition board , as we did in the garden beds , we bestow a layer of wood chips to create walking paths . The composition board plus wood flake combination helped to blockade weeds and create rich undercover habitats for ahealthy grime microbiomebetween our garden rows .
Compost Worm Habitat
It ’s swell to have a stockpile of cardboard pieces to layer into yourworm compost bin . Because urban homesteaders normally have an excess of nitrogen - ample food for thought waste , sandwiching the kitchen and garden flake between layer of cardboard helps make a healthier compost mix . The worm seem to be attracted to the rot sheets of cardboard , which hold back a nice moistness and immobilise out light , creating the perfect habitat for red wigglers .
Pantry And Seed Storage
If you retrieve mason jar makes the most beautiful storehouse container for those dried flowers , herbs and seeds , think again . That glass jounce might cause your fastidiously collected stack tea leaf to turn to modeling if there is even a little bit of wet , and Inner Light can do essential oils to break down . The ideal environment for storing dried seed and herbs is dry and dark . A unsympathetic cardboard loge can bring home the bacon in force line circulation and jam Inner Light for optimal storage for your pantry items .
What are some of your favourite ways to reprocess cardboard into a valuable resource ?
