Mulching With Newspapers

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Photo by Fotolia/Orlando Bellini
Do your local public library (and your garden!) a favor by picking up old newspapers to use as sheet mulch.

We apply permaculture gardening techniques to our lawn, which means we need a lot of sheet mulch. Finding enough newsprint (especially in this era of electronic media) isn’t easy, however.

Fortunately, we found a solution at our local public library. We’ve started carting away the library’s old newspapers each week so the staff doesn’t have to. This not only saves our librarians some work, but it also provides us with a steady, year-round supply of free sheet mulch. Our only “costs” are weekly library stops — which we would’ve made anyway — and homemade cheese ball trays that we give the library staff each Christmas. (It’s not really a bribe; it’s an investment.)

John Ludy
Fremont, Indiana

  • Published on Jul 14, 2014
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