Uses for Cardboard in the Garden

Mulch Lining

• You can use cardboard in your garden underneath mulch to deter weeds. Cardboard eventually deteriorates. You can lay the cardboard down in flat sheets or incorporate it into the mulch, shredding it first. Cardboard also works well in compost. You can line the borders of the compost heap with layered cardboard and grass cuttings. Boxes with grease (pizza boxes, for example) should be avoided as they risk contaminating your vegetation.

Slow Box Cooker

• Place a solar box cooker in your garden for barbecues and cookouts. Cooking with a solar box cooker produces no pollution or smoke. You need three to four cardboard boxes to make a cooker, and they come in a wide variety of styles, sizes and shapes. You can save money on coal, propane or wood chips, depending on how you traditionally grill. Reusing cardboard also helps to save trees.

Growing Column

• Cardboard panels and round tubes work well as growing columns. Pieces of corrugated cardboard are placed in a chicken wire-lined column with a stability pipe in the center. Slits are made (about 50) in the cardboard, and seedlings are planted through them. The column is watered through the center, and the water sinks below and spreads to the outsides, nourishing the plants' roots.

Seedling Starters

• Cardboard tubes like toilet paper rolls and paper towels work very well for starting seedlings. Each toilet paper tube can be made into four starter pots, and a paper towel tube makes four. The pots are laid out on a tray sitting tightly together, so they don't topple over during watering. Each pot is filled partially with seedling starter medium, and seeds are planted in them. Once you transplant the seedlings into their permanent homes, break down the cardboard tube sides, and bury them completely in the growing medium.