the easiest way to start a garden
It’s just after Christmas and the perfect time for me to put all those cardboard boxes to good use!
If you’re a recluse—I mean an introvert— like me, you do most of your shopping online. It’s the best thing ever. It also leaves behind boxes for days.
I love using every part of the packaging to make useful things. I will be posting a tutorial soon on how I made stamps and wrapping paper out of packaging as well. So stay tuned for that!
Today however, we are going to focus on the immense amount of cardboard and how it can be put to good use in your garden.
My mother in law is a Master Gardener (that’s a real title) and she taught me this method. It’s been about a decade now since I started learning this simpler, cheaper way to garden. It’s called Permaculture.
Permaculture takes the natural ecosystem and structure of a forest and applies it to your own yard, usually in the form of a food forest.
There are natural occurring methods in nature that help create beautiful, thriving forests and permaculture aims to replicate that.
So without further ado, here is how you can lay the groundwork for your garden with very little effort and zero cost from you.
You will need:
Cardboard, brown paper bags, or some sort of paper product
Plant matter such as leaves, mulch, or branches
Cardboard and mulch work the best in this situation but you can use any of the above.
Step 1
Start by breaking down your boxes so they can lay flat on the ground.
These boxes are great. They have a matte finish and not a lot of print 👆🏼
It is best to use boxes that do NOT have a shiny finish on them, like this one does. 👇🏼
***Side note, I tried this paint gun out for the first time a couple of days ago. It’s no big deal, but all the DIYers are doing it***
Ok, where were we?
As you break down your boxes, if you notice any shiny, plasticky tape, this will need to be removed.
If it’s not coming off easily, you can wet your box with a hose real quick, let it sit for 10-15 minutes while you work on your other boxes and then try pulling the tape off. You can even start by wetting all of your boxes if you want to make all of it easier. The water loosens the glue and the tape should peal right off.
If you have tape that does not have a shiny finish on it, it should break down fine in the garden bed and can be left on the box. Like this one 👇🏼
So basically, what we’ve learned so far is shiny = bad.
The layer of cardboard and paper products will attract earth worms to your garden and they are the ones who are going to do all of the work for prepping your soil and feeding your plants. Earth worms will eat the cardboard, paper, and other plant matter and turn it into wonderfully rich soil when they poop.
The layer of cardboard will also help kill any grass or weeds underneath it. Not that you won’t end up with weeds in your garden, because trust me, a huge part of natural gardening here in Florida requires embracing the weeds. Ive learned not to fuss over them and not to spend my time trying to pull them all out. I have tried many times before and I come out the loser every time. So save yourself the headache and learn to love them.
Here’s a picture from when I used to pull the weeds.
I mean, come on… Unless I want to spend all of my time toiling, I must embrace them. Also, they just come back in a few weeks.
Step 2.
Lay your cardboard on the ground wherever you are looking to start your garden bed. You can layer it up as thick as you want but at least one layer covering the ground is all you need.
Step 3.
Time to add mulch, branches, leaves, pine needles, whatever you’ve got!
If you don’t have many of those things in your own yard you can get them fairly easily and for free.
There are many people who take their leaves, place them in bags and put them by the street. You can easily drive by and snatch ‘em up. Might as well put them to work in your garden!
I’ve even told my neighbors over the years that, instead of bagging their leaves, they can toss them over the fence to my side of the yard and I’ll put them to good use.
You could find an old lady and offer to rake her yard or trim her trees for her. Ask her if she minds you using them in her yard.
Find branches on the side of the road as well.
This method is my favorite: Contact a local tree trimming company and ask if they can dump some mulch in your yard. I have a tree trimming guy that has been giving me truck loads of free mulch for years. They have to dump the mulch anyway, might as well be in your yard!
Whatever you are able to add, you will need it to reach a thickness of at least 8-12 inches. The thicker the better. It should be fairly compact too. If you add branches but they are not laying flat, then you might end up with large gaps in your layering and the plant matter won’t break down the way it needs to in order to create a rich layer of soil.
So grab some lopping sheers and cut your branches until they lay flat on top of each other.
The goal is to have a thick, dense enough layer that holds in moisture and heat. This is replicating a forest floor that has leaf and branch drop. It’s the forest’s way of feeding itself and maintaining a healthy microbiome.
If your branches are dead and brittle you can also walk or stomp on them to flatten them out. You may want to do that periodically as they get more brittle over the next couple of months.
Finish it off with some larger logs or sticks for a natural boarder and you’re good to go!
I like to have leaves or mulch as my top layer because it is more aesthetically pleasing than branches.
That’s it!
No chemicals, no tilling, no digging, no building raised beds, no buying wood or soil or mulch. You can’t really beat that!
Permaculture really aims to set up your own food forest or ecosystem that will eventually take care of itself like the great thriving forests that need no gardener to tend them. Just someone to appreciate and enjoy them.
Give your garden bed time to break down and turn into something fertile for your plants to thrive in. You can continue to add leaves and mulch to it until you have a garden that’s creating its own mulch.
And like I said before—embrace the weeds! Part of their job is to cover the ground and keep moisture in. If you do enough research, you may find that most weeds are edible or important for pollinators. So learn from my wasted hours of toiling and let nature do its thang!
Here’s a super quick video of me creating one of my plant beds. Now get out there and get started!
