Doug Kanter wrote:

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Doug Kanter" contains these words:


"mary" wrote in message
...
In her book "Earthly Delights" (which I would recommend) Margot
Rochester
suggests that to create a new garden bed lay down eight layers of
newspaper
and then place compost on it, and then cover with leaves. She does not
suggest digging up the ground underneath. It sounds like a good
process,
but
my wife wonders about the ink the newspaper. Will it cause any harm if
you
grow vegtables. Any opinions?

Check the masthead of the newspapers. You may see a message saying it's
printed with soy-based ink. That's not monstrous stuff, and you're only
going to go through this process once.

** I use flattened cardboard cartons instead; available free form shops.
For the covering layer I use lawn grass clippings, seaweed, bracken,
wood ash, manure; whatever raw, compostable material I can get. Very
quickly, worms start working in it, and birds start stirring up the
materials looking for the worms; so it isn't long before the raw
ingredients break down into brown friable composty material.

** Janet.

Sounds great, unless you need it ready to plant within a few days.

FWIW
I wanted ground cover around a newly planted, fairly large tree, so i
did the newspaper thing, spread about 2 - 3" of soil and peat on
top and stuck a bunch of Dragon's Blood creepers in.
They were weed free the first two summers and by that time were
well enough established to hold off the weeds on their own.

Ma
*