Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
my other activators during the process and some water. It's much the same as building a
compost pile.
If you're feeling impatient and want to plant some vegetables into it right away, dig
your planting holes in the sheet mulch and put compost in them. Some plants will like this
better than others — squash does great in a new sheet mulch. The plants will be growing
in the mulch, not down in the ground. One exception to this is potatoes, which can be
planted directly into the soil beneath the sheet mulch, if you cut holes into the cardboard
for the shoots to come through. This works because seed potatoes are big compared to
other seeds, so they have enough energy to make it up to the light through all that mulch,
and can grow many tubers in the extra deep organic soil, without needing to mound up the
soil around them like people often do.
It can be difficult to get enough materials to sheet mulch a big area, so it's often best
done for a kitchen garden right near the house, which will end up covered in my most im-
portant foods for daily picking, such as herbs and greens. I may even do this inside a
raised garden bed.
Personally, I use sheet mulching and always have a compost pile going, too. They're
both just too useful to choose one over the other.
