Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Greg and April" <gregandapril@earthlink.net>]

Most newspaper printers, use a vegetable oil base ink, with no heavy metals, even for the colored stuff.    Just call your local newspaper, and ask for the print manager ( sometimes called a print editor ), and ask him what they are using in their ink.

 

Greg H.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: William Whisenant

To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 21:27

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] ??no-till?? - Question

Hi,

 

I have been reading with interest the experiences of people using newspapers in the gardens. Does anyone have any concern with the toxicity of the inks in the newspaper?

 

Or is this not an issue?

 

Thanks.

 

Bill Whisenant

Patricia Ruggiero <ruggierop@earthlink.net> wrote:

Jim wrote:

> Could
> cardboard be used to
> suppress weeds around such crops as tomatoes or peppers. It
> probably would
> not be practical for crowded crops like carrots, or would it?

We use cardboard and newspapers. *How* we use them depends on what we're
trying to accomplish, when we're trying to accomplish it, and the method of
planting any particular crop or bed.

For example, if a bed comes empty too late in the autumn for sowing a cover
crop, I cover the bed with a thin layer of newspaper topped with 18" of hay
from our field. We don't need the newspaper to build soil at this point;
its purpose here is to block the light from reaching weed seeds -- yes, even
through 18" of hay, because the hay is loosely piled and there are *always*
holes for light to get through.

What we do in the spring with such a bed depends on what's being planted,
how, and which of us is doing it. Husbands prefers to remove paper and hay
(stash it on an empty bed), add compost over all, and plant seeds or
transplants. If spacing between plants permits (tomatoes yes; salad greens
no) he returns that jumbled paper/hay mulch to the bed. I prefer to spread
the paper/hay mulch aside to expose planting rows or circles, drawing it
back in closer to the plants once they're established. I find that I have
almost no weed problems with this method.

If a bed has a cover crop, I wait until the frost kills it, evaluate the bed
for weeds, add newspaper or not depending on what I see, and then dump on
the 18" of hay.

If a bed hasn't had newspaper from the previous winter, or the newspaper has
mostly disintegrated, I am likely to add it between *widely* spaced
plantings with hay/straw to cover.

The cardboard we reserve for starting new beds. Cut existing vegetation as
short as possible, leaving the cuttings in place. Place cardboard on top,
and pile with hay, hay, and more hay. And whatever else we might get.
Leave for a year.

The narrow walkways between beds are covered thickly with newspaper (I leave
entire sections intact) and woodchips, of which we always have a supply, as
some tree either dies or blows down at least once every two years. This
cover lasts *well* for one year. In the second year it's clearly
deteriorating; rather than refresh it, however, I dump on some hay to get us
through, because at the end of that second year, the newspaper and chips
have decomposed to the point where the material can be raked onto the
adjacent beds. *Then* I redo the entire process.

Pat
Central Virginia, USDA zone 7

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