I have been just stirring it into my compost.. I figure if its good to lay sheets of newsprint under mulch, and if its good to raise earthworms in, its gotta be fine mixed in the mulch..
I could be wrong :)

i dont know about the glossy pages ???

they are never recommended in lasagna beds .. so why would they be ok in compost ...

no experience though.. so go at it..

ken

Shredded paper goes in the compost bin. Earthworms love it. I'm not sure it would make a good mulch. It's white and unattractive, it will mat down and lose volume when wet and it will break down fast.

If you have turf or weeds that have been killed with Round Up you don't need an additional barrier such as newsprint. Just amend your soil and then put down a more traditional mulch to suppress weeds. Wood chips work well as mulch. They suppress weeds, last long and improve the soil underneath.

Steve

As a rule, most colored print is soy based these days for economic reasons, but, all rules are made to be broken. If knowing for sure is important to someone, the only way to be absolutely sure would be to contact various manufactures. I doubt there's enough tainted stuff out there to worry about anymore. I compost some paper (without regard to color, race or national origin...well, maybe China is a concern) but I recyle most of mine as leaves make up the majority of the carbon my compost needs. The glossy coating is likely to kaolin clay now and it's slowness to decompose is why its avoided in lasagna gardening.

tj

I've used it in compost piles for years, and also unshreaded under black landscaping fabric in my tomato and pepper gardens, with nothing over the fabric. It absorbs a lot of water, but I think it works best when a small gap is left between layers of sheet so rainwater will drain into the soil. It's the worms that do the work, and their casts are great for the garden. I read somewhere the colored, shiny print uses a clay coating worms don't like, or is toxic to them: something like that.

In Arkansas where my veggie gardens were all raised beds I used newsprint in the walks between beds, covered with straw or wood chips to keep the papers from blowing away. I never had muddy paws when I picked my tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onions and kiwi. As in the garden itself, in about a year the newsprint was ready to be turned into the soil and each spring I simply took it and the straw up, dumped it into my compost bin, and refreshed the walkways.

I don't know how this would work in general. I had a source of really good chicken litter from local commercial growers to spike my compost with.

Les

Sounds good to me. I find shredding reduces the amount of trash going to pickup, and I like that.

Thanks for the variety of responses.

Dh works as an analyst for the military and brings home bags of super finely shredded (we're talking pulverized, here) classified documents for me to put in my garden. I spread it under mulch, and it works beautifully to keep grass and weeds at bay. Somehow it makes me feel very important to know that matters of national security are hidden safely under my hostas! ;)

Karen

lol. bury the evidence....well that isn't new.

We shred all the junk mail and add it to the compost. Newspapers go under the mulch where we are layering, colored inserts and all.

Only thing about shredding all that junk mail is that pieces of plastic and window envelopes keep showing up in the soil. That stuff probably has a half-life of a thousand years....we never grow anything in the garden that we eat so I don'tworry about toxicity of inks.

Sandy

If I have paper shreds when I'm tilling, I till them directly into the soil. Otherwise, into the compost bin they go. Much too messy to use as a mulch. And after being wet a few times, I would think the shreds would sorta' fuse, dry out and end up being a barrier to rainfall, irrigation penetrating to the soil.

Yes, I think the fusing would wind up like old paper they used to make egg crates.

But KSKaren, I love the thought of all those pulverized documents beneath your hosta......if you ever hybridize or get to name a seedling hosta out of your garden, I think you have every right to name it TOP SECRET......Love it!!!

And TsugaJunkie, your post sounds like you know a bit about papermaking. Are you from anywhere around Appleton WI? I went to the Institute of Paper Chemistry there a couple of times. Nice people.

Moccasin,

Start a worm bin. Use the worm castings as an ingredient in your potting soil. Have you seen the cost of a bag of worm castings?? Not cheap!

Deanna

We have recycling in our town and all paper is a valuable resource. So even junk mail gets recycled, that is after we cut out address labels. My three 3x3x3 ft compost bins are full of composting shredded leaves plus some lawn clippings.
Bernd

moccasinlanding- No, not from Appleton but I've been around papermakers basically my whole life and have composted for 25 years. I wanted to make sure what went into my compost so have made a point to find out what is in "stuff". ;-)

tj

"we never grow anything in the garden that we eat so I don'tworry about toxicity of inks."
Did you mean to say that?

I knew somebody would jump on that. No, I don't worry about a little possibly toxic ink winding up in the soil. Nothing is grown in the garden that we eat that might take up toxins into the foliage except the herb garden, and no newspaper goes there. (And if somebody eats my hostas, they are gonna die long before any toxins can take effect, lol!)

Besides, what with all the manufactured chemicals people pour into their gardens in the interest of having bug-free plants and weed-free gardens, and the GMO foods we are served that fill our bodies with junk (and I'm not going to get into that arguement on here) a few inks are the least of my worries.

I grow plants in my garden, we all do, that produce way more poisons (monkshood, datura, peaches, impatiens, morning glories, nicotiana, foxgloves, eg to name just a few) than a few inks and glossy coatings will.

Sandy

do an internet search with keywords papercrete or paper crete and name Lee