I have a lot of shredded paper at work. I think I've read that it is good in a bean trench but have I also seen it can be used with potatoes.Has anybody used the paper.I would be interested to know how it was used and any problems you may have had.
I think you have to make sure it's wet and /or mixed with the soil so that it doesn't form a barrier between plants and soil.
I use it in the compost bin, interspersed with vegetable peelings etc. Especially in winter when there isn't much garden stuff about.
It can also be used in the worm bin, for example to cover half the top surface. It insulates and gives the worms a bit of a refuge. The other half gets fresh peelings.
Be careful if it has a lot of coloured ink on it - those chemicals are not great for the garden. But if it's just plain old paper I find it's good in compost and also can be used as a mulch if you don't mind it blowing about a bit!
I used it on top as a mulch with grass cutting and it looked horrible. I would think OK in bottom of bean trench with green waste on top to keep moisture in.
Yep...just as others have already said. I prefer to 'hide' it either under soil or in compost/worm bin. It works as mulch but doesn't look pretty so you might want to cover the mulch with another mulch.
As I think I have mentioned before we get loads of horse manure FOC and this consists of the horse droppings on shredded cardboard bedding! (Cheaper than straw)
The cardboard has been shredded in a manner to create pieces about one inch square.
I find it terrific stuff to dig in rather than mulch.
I have noticed that those plot holders who use it as a mulch are pretty much wasting there time as the weather washes the manure out to leave the squares of board which, when they dry out tend to blow all over the place making the plots looking rather untidy!
It is a brilliant mix if allowed to rot down in a compost heap/bin as it ends up the consistency of a chocolate sponge cake!
In fact this year I am using it in my potting compost mix.
I am using a recipe of three parts peat, two parts rotted down compost half a measure of silver sand and the consistency is brilliant best I have had in many a year.
My hope now is that my seedlings benefit from this experiment!
So to sum up I would say dig in your shredded paper or place in the compost heap/bin to rot down before use!
Many thanks for the tips. It seems like it's probably best to use it in the compost bin before putting it on the plot.
When Garden Organic were Henry Doubleday (and much better for it - less blindly PC) they published test results about modern inks - showing that none of them contain metal pigments these days - and they all degrade harmlessly.
Shreddings are a good mulch for strawberries and under the berries - because they have less troublesome spores etc than straw which encourages various berry rots.
However even I wouldn't go as far as to choose shreddings red enough to improve crops like they say red does.
Also avoid secretive places that shred really old documents before they become public - they might contain heavy metals.
Metal pigments these days are only found under the glaze of pottery - bright yellow is always uranium!
Cheers.
"Blindly PC"? I don't know much about the organisation, could you elaborate?
Oh - if you are not familiar with them I have to say they are still a very good organisation - and the creeping blight of "magical thinking" is nothing like as bad as the extent to which the RSPCA has been moving towards 'animal rights' at the expense of animal welfare (no I'm not getting into that argument - its a widely held commonsense point of view but not my area of expertise).
If you want their history, mission and aims etc. then look at their .org - but their original slant was very clear sighted and.... vernacular? They did an excellent job of checking what the 'cide industry called "old wives tales" and "muck & magic" and proved that there was maybe 80% very precious truth in it whereas what the industry called "science" was nothing of the sort - in fact it was 90% b0ll* - and dangerously short-termist b0ll* at that.
The current slide is as much as anything a side-effect of the pernicious doctrine of extremes - if a little bit of health & safety is a good thing then an obsession is better (or a passion or all those other management consultant nonsense extremes). If caution was the best approach to 'cides (it was) then paranoia about anything that anyone says is a poison is better - no matter how ignorant the journalist/source and irrespective of the fact that just about everything is a poison if the circumstances are extreme. Caffeine is a poison (it is unless you happen to be a human being) and so are most vitamins and minerals if you overdose.
Just a sign o' the times really.
Cheers.
Paranoia? Yep, I do paranoia. I'm organic partly because I don't have the time or energy or chemistry knowledge (beyond A Level at school and some biochemistry at university) to properly assess the huge array of chemicals available at the garden centres. I don't know what the long- or short-term effects of them are, so I don't use them.
My dad, who had an allotment in the 80s, is horrified at my garden. He's always telling me I should be spraying the greenfly or putting weedkillers on the dandelions or growing nothing but expensive and boring F1 hybrids. I say soapy water for the aphids the blue tits don't eat, I pick the dandelions for my rabbit and let nettles grow for the peacock butterflies and enjoy saving my open-pollinated seeds instead of buying seeds every year.
Caffeine's poison to humans too - take enough of it and it'll kill you. I don't do caffeine myself (because I don't like the jittery effect and I sleep badly enough as it is).