After years of kill mulching, I've become a bit of a cardboard connoisseur. Corrugated vastly trumps uncorrugated. Smaller flaps mean more ground coverage than larger flaps. And produce boxes with holes in the middle? I used to think those were a pain in the butt...until now.

It occurred to me as I prepared to plant some summer squash in the site of last year's compost pile that weeds were going to pop up like mad in the newly bared ground. So I laid down a kill mulch first, using a holey box as my central row. Then I poked a single squash seed into the soil beneath each hole.

A month later, the squash are thriving and I've finally decided I love those holey produce boxes. What part of the waste stream will I find a perfect use for next, I wonder?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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