Newspapers Can Have a Great Role In the Garden – After You Read Them

A reader upset about some of my recent musings in this column suggested throwing the Fayette County Record in the trash. That’s just silly. You could at least recycle it. But there are lots of other ways to use the newspaper, especially in the garden.

The thin paper used to make newspapers, known as newsprint, breaks down very quickly in the soil. It’s made out of wood pulp, so it composts very easily. You can lay it down in layers of two or three sheets in the walkways between the rows in your garden. Cover it with woodchip mulch, and it will prevent weeds from germinating and sprouting through the mulch, at least for a while.

As the mulch and newspaper break down and become part of the soil, add another layer of newspaper and mulch. In this way, you’ll build your garden soil over time. I live on sandy, gravely land. But my garden soil is almost black. That’s mostly from all the woodchips, cardboard and newspaper I’ve layered on the soil over the years.

I prefer this over plastic or other weed barriers. Beneficial microbes need oxygen to survive. Plastic prevents the soil from breathing. In my experience, the woven fabric weed barriers don’t work very well, either. They do allow the soil to breathe. But some weeds, especially bermudagrass, eventually grows up through the woven fabric, defeating its purpose.

You can also line the bottom of a planter box with old newspapers. If you’re placing the box somewhere in your yard, scrape away as much of the grass as you can first. Then lay down about 10 or 20 layers of newspaper pages to keep any surviving grass from growing up through the box.

You can also make compost very quickly using old newspapers. Shred the paper as finely as you can. Running over loose sheets with a lawnmower can be quite effective, if not messy. Mix the shredded paper with fresh green grass clippings. Aim for a ratio of four parts shredded newspaper to one part grass clippings. Pile it up in a bin made out of chicken wire or old pallets - just make sure the bin can breathe. Then water it and mix it with a pitchfork every few days. In a few weeks, depending on weather conditions, you’ll have some lovely black compost to use in your garden.

Here at the newspaper, we always print quite a few more copies than we actually sell (except when we run a chupacabra story – those issues often sell out). We eventually take them to the recycling center. But we hold on to several bundles each week.

We sell the old papers for $2 a bundle. People buy them for all sorts of uses – from gardening projects to packing material.