permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

neshura wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone had ever tried using wet paperback books in
> sheet mulching.
>
> The reason I ask is...some of you may have heard about the floods
> along the eastern seaboard of the US. I lost my car and everything in
> my basement in a flash flood. I can't do anything about the car, but

Sorry about that. Hope you had insurance, at least to cover the car.

> now I'm wondering if it would be reasonable to lay out a bunch of
> paperback books along the ground in a single layer, cover them with
> the wet cardboard they were stored in, throw a layer of leaf litter on
> top, and let the worms turn them into something useful.

That procedure will work very well and you will have _many_ worms breeding
under the compost. If you have any composted manure or finished compost with 
food scraps I would put a thin
layer of this on the ground then adding the leaves and finally adding the 
cardboard then the books on top.
This will work better than having the most easily compostable components on 
top and the least next to the earth.

> Is this likely to go horribly wrong? Am I just making a landfill in my
> own yard if I do this? Do worms prefer economics texts or mystery
> novels?

Supernatural tales. HP Lovecraft, particularly.

Got your Frappr message about wanting handmade garden tools and have been meaning to reply. I am supremely well set up 
to produce great handtools from recycled steel parts, especially curcular saw blades. Email me what you are looking for
and I will send feedback as to design and fabrication. The materials I have 
in abundance are: O1 steel round bar stock,
circular saw blades and lots of different tempered round rods, usually made into springs for tractor-drawn implements 
such as hay tedders, balers, sickle-var cutter blades (triangular flat teeth, serrated and sharpened) and lots of 
micellaneous materials.

LL