garden prep: how to make a bed, with cardboard

THERE ARE VARIOUS more backbreaking ways to make a new garden bed, but in recent years I’ve often relied upon the magic of recyclables: newspaper and cardboard. It’s not all about being lazy, or getting older and less inclined toward heroic digging, either.

Prepping a bed without turning or tilling may actually help reduce the number of weed seeds that sprout, so in many situations, it’s my tactic of choice. If a sunny patch of lawn is destined to house a crop of summer tomatoes or a fall-planted bulb garden, or an existing border needs some smothering of weeds.

how to make a bed with cardboard

THE EXPLANATION below assumes the underlying soil is fairly decent, neither bog nor wasteland nor highly compacted, and that the vegetation growing in it is mostly herbaceous (like lawn, not a thicket of blackberries or poison ivy!).

If the vegetation is tougher than turfgrass or the equivalent, first use a spading fork and dislodge the weedy or woody clumps, and remove them carefully. This may be easiest after a good rain, or put a sprinkler on the area beforehand. You can see this process of weed removal in the double-digging video below (even if you don’t do the rest of the 24-inch-deep soil improvement the way I used to).

Over the freshly weeded area, or right over turf that you have mown short first, simply layer on newspaper thickly, or spread out flattened corrugated cardboard as the weed-smothering underlayment. Moisten the paper and pin it down with earth staples or weigh it down with rocks, then cover with mulch. (Advice on which mulch is here; that’s mine in the photo above.)

Depending on the time of year and what I am planting, I may cut X’s in the cardboard with my spade or a mat knife and plant immediately, then mulch

how-to garden garden prep organics bed