# what do you add to the dirt before planting



## cat-face timber (Apr 6, 2013)

I am thinking about adding shredded cardboard to my dirt before planting.

What do you think?

Is this a good Idea? What will the cardboard do to my soil?
The reason I am doing this is to break up the soil, as it gets very hard afrer being wet.


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## tbow388 (Apr 6, 2013)

I till in cotton seed compost. This year I will have tilled it up 3 times before planting.


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## bowtechmadman (Apr 6, 2013)

Horse manure, leaves, grass clippings in the fall and tilled in then rye for winter. Till again in spring.


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## NCPABill (Apr 7, 2013)

I like to have an "at rest" area, which I seed in buckwheat around the first of July. Til it in in the fall and again in the Spring. Great stuff to break up the soil - it is hollow stemmed.

Good luck,

Bill


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## indiansprings (Apr 7, 2013)

Rabbit chit and vermiculite. I grow some fantastic watermelons and cantelope by cutting plastic 55 gallon barrels in half and then drill drainage/siphon holes in the bottom and add about an inch or two of gravel, add about 2/3 of the remainder with good black dirt/1/3 rabbit chit and about a pound of vermiculite mixed all together and sit it in the spring and it allows for water to sipon up to the roots of the melon plant and run the vine out on dry ground. 

Your cardboard idea will work good too, basically doing the same thing as the vermiculite, holding/attracting moisture. I knew a barber who swore by mixing hair into his dirt, he kept all his clippings for fertilizer. I would add some type of manure, whether it be horse, pig, rabbit, or chicken. The tree huggers use composting toliets and use their own composted waste for planting their organic veggies, so you could always dig a hole and fertilize it yourself, a cardboard wouldn't be that bad instead of toliet paper.


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## farmer steve (Apr 10, 2013)

indiansprings said:


> Rabbit chit and vermiculite. I grow some fantastic watermelons and cantelope by cutting plastic 55 gallon barrels in half and then drill drainage/siphon holes in the bottom and add about an inch or two of gravel, add about 2/3 of the remainder with good black dirt/1/3 rabbit chit and about a pound of vermiculite mixed all together and sit it in the spring and it allows for water to sipon up to the roots of the melon plant and run the vine out on dry ground.
> 
> Your cardboard idea will work good too, basically doing the same thing as the vermiculite, holding/attracting moisture. I knew a barber who swore by mixing hair into his dirt, he kept all his clippings for fertilizer. I would add some type of manure, whether it be horse, pig, rabbit, or chicken. The tree huggers use composting toliets and use their own composted waste for planting their organic veggies, so you could always dig a hole and fertilize it yourself, a cardboard wouldn't be that bad instead of toliet paper.



organic or not i think human waste is not legal or at least not recommened for veggies


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## AndrewGeib (Apr 10, 2013)

I till in mushroom soil


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## JHctRednek (Apr 10, 2013)

The only experience that I have with cardboard is they used to make paper mulch (like plastic mulch but biodegradable) you were supposed to just harrow it under in the fall and it would degrade over the winter. I didn't like the look of it left paper chunks sticking up out of the ground everywhere and took about 3 yrs to go away. 

I use horse, chicken and cow (mainly cow) manure to dress the main gardens yearly, I use sawdust and shredded leaves on my potato patch. I have been trying trench composting in my dead zone of the garden with grass clippins, saw dust and manure. 



NCPABill said:


> I like to have an "at rest" area, which I seed in buckwheat around the first of July. Til it in in the fall and again in the Spring. Great stuff to break up the soil - it is hollow stemmed.
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> Bill



Buckwheat is awsome stuff we use it to change over old corn fields to hay fields, plant it in the spring then mow it in a couple of weeks, then mow it a couple of weeks after that. Turn it under and replant mow it in a couple of weeks, then mow it a couple of weeks after that then plant rye to sit til the next spring. Lots of nice material in the ground, breaks up the ground and it chokes out all of the weeds, then the rye keeps the weeds from resprouting. Buckwheat got really expensive up here the last couple of years shot up from $30 bucks a bag to almost $90 though.


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## mainewoods (Apr 10, 2013)

Cardboard between the rows is a good mulch-keeps soil temp cool. Newspaper is better (no colored print) and decomposes quicker. It's ugly and best covered lightly with dirt. I prefer grass clippings between rows and amended into the soil. Great soil builder and a terrible waste to throw it into the woods.


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## Stihlofadeal64 (Apr 23, 2013)

We use composted cow manure here and the wifey says that it is better than miracle grow. She is a fan of mulching the tomato plants. We are currently using water oak leaves around the base of the plant. I till the rows in the middle to keep the grass down. Looking forward to some good ole 
"mater-sammiches" (I know, I know, it's a redneck thing - WITH the Duke's Mayonaise!) :cool2:


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## slinger (Apr 24, 2013)

I add compost and homemade "bio char" and depending on the crop, starter fertilizer. I think composted cardboard would be an excellent amendment. my guess is that Raw cardboard might take away nutrients from the crop by raising the Carbon:Nitrogen ratio also I don't know what else is in (adhesives etc)cardboard


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## Arbonaut (Apr 24, 2013)

AndrewGeib said:


> I till in mushroom soil



Dang now there's a good reason to live in Pennsylvania. We get that by the tandem from a nursery. And he gets her from you by the semi. Cat-face, I don't know about the glue in cardboard today. Don't forget wood ashes, thats 5% potash. Watch your soil pH though ashes act like lime in the soil. Which is good on the lawn. If ya got any worm farmers locally, get worm castings. That is the only thing beyond spent Mushroom casing which is composted horse manure. The reason spent mushroom casing is better than regular horse compost is the mycelium tissue from the agaricus crop feeds the microorganisms in the soil. It is a more readily available food source for the bacteria in the rhizoshere.


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## wampum (Apr 24, 2013)

AndrewGeib said:


> I till in mushroom soil



Mushroom manure is great stuff.I have a guy that has trucks about 3 miles for me,all he does is haul horse manure from a race track about 80 miles a way to mines where they grow mushrooms.The mushroom mines sterilize the horse manure. This eliminates all the weeds and allowed the mushrooms a good rich sterile place to grow.I have gotten this stuff many times.Often I have put a tarp on it.Sometimes under the tarp I have found mushrooms later.The mines only use the manure once,the trucker hauls it away and it gets sold as compost.


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## Sawyer Rob (Apr 29, 2013)

Cardboard is carbon, so you need to add some high Nitrogen fertilizer to get it to break down faster. If you don't, it will pull the N out of your soil. Just buy a bag of ballanced fert, like 13 13 13 and add some where you put the cardboard.

Myself, i don't use any chemical ferts at all. I use composted turkey poop and composted cow chit,







The more the better!

SR


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## Dalmatian90 (Apr 30, 2013)

Just to add a bit to what Sawyer wrote, what happens while the "stuff" (grass, straw, wood chips, cardboard, etc.) is decomposing nitrogen will be locked up by the decomposition process.

Afterwards it'll be released again.

Works great for flower beds -- that's why you spread bark mulch, seeds that land in it don't have much N available to grow vigorously. The flowers are happy campers since N isn't being locked up in their root zone.

So that's the problem with tilling in cardboard -- don't expect much of a crop this year in that area. Adding fertilizer or manure may help. Now tilling it in and planting next year, you should be fine.

Mixing up greens (stuff like grass clippings which tend to be high in N) with browns (dead leaves, cardboard, paper) in a compost pile and letting it rot for a year means all that locking up of N happens in the compost pile and not your garden soil. So then after it makes compost you mix that into your garden.


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## cat-face timber (Apr 30, 2013)

Thank you all so much for the info!


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## Sagetown (May 1, 2013)

Last year I began using residue from my grass round baled hay fed to cattle all winter which is full of moisture, excretion and mud. It is pushed in piles in the spring, and rolled over through the summer. It gets so hot it smokes like it's on fire. Once it turns to compost I've been putting it in the garden. My garden is clay loam, so hopefully this compost will be of great benefit.


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