by Susan Risley

Created on: March 29, 2008

I have been an organic gardener for thirty years. I can grow just about anything. The problem is that I am mechanically challenged. Whenever I run a lawnmower, the blades get bound up. Every time I try to run a rototiller, I get something tangled in the tines. That is if I can even get the machinery to run in the first place. So the only things I can depend on working are my spade, rake and hoe. In fact, I even have a difficult time with them as I end up breaking the wooden handles. So with my fiberglass handled gardening utensils, I head out to "plow" my dirt.

I used to go out in the spring and dig up the weeds, one clump at a time. It was back-breaking work. Each weed had a pound or two of dirt clinging to the roots that I had to shake and pound off. It took hours, days. even weeks (as I got older) to get my ten by twenty-five area scalped. Of course, I constantly reminded myself that it was going to be worth it when all those fresh vegetables finally appeared on the vines and bushes. I also thought of it as a good cardiac work out. But as the years went by, my garden plot became smaller and smaller because I just didn't have the energy to do that much weeding.

One time I went to a friend's house and noticed a shag carpet in the corner of her backyard. I thought that was a little silly, so I asked her why she had carpet in her yard. "Oh, that's the garden," she replied. "We roll it up in the spring and then rototill and wallah, we have a garden."

My sister had recently remodeled her home, so I asked her for the old carpet she'd removed. She gladly gave it to me. It was heavy but I finally got it rolled out on the garden spot. Now, our garden spot is in bottom ground. In fact, we flood sometimes in the winter. We did flood that winter, and much of the carpet disintegrated. It was very difficult to remove and we battled with leftover strands for years afterward.

Needless to say, it didn't work for our garden. But it did give me the idea that somehow I needed to smother the weeds and grass. That's when I thought about cardboard. I shop at a local grocery outlet that always has boxes available. Then I started raiding the recycle bins behind the bookstore. I've found several sources of cardboard in my town. I open the boxes up and lay them over the garden spot. Sometimes I have to double up to avoid gaps where weeds can creep through. I allow the cardboard to sit on the area for at least three months. This gives enough time for the moisture to break the cardboard down, and it does. In the spring, I just lift off whatever cardboard is still intact and toss it on the compost pile. There are always lots of worms underneath, and the soil is mostly weed free.

Then I go out there with my spade and quickly turn over the topsoil, rake it even with my rake and it's ready to plant.

So I no longer let the fact that I am mechanically challenged slow me down. I've also learned another trick: Give the grandkids their own garden tools for Christmas and you'll have all the help you need.

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