Kitchen Garden Forum

Imagine the surprise to register for a kitchen gardeners forum for the new pastime only to be confronted with raging debate on several threads regarding the merits and suitability of Cardboard!

Thought I'd dredge up the old Environmental Chemistry degree (as yet unused) to help the debate along.

Most cardboard tubes are a combination of a high % cellulose (plant material) and starch based adhesives (derived from potatoes/corn etc). Some may use PolyVinylAcetate (PVA) glues which are toxic if ingested and they are water soluable BUT most manufacturers wont spend lots on glue so amounts are relatively small, and they like to be seen as eco-warriors. PVA might represent a risk to the image!

Interestingly PVA has been used to supress fungal growth on cheese and therefore if fungal growth occurs on would-be germination modules I might suspect PVA is not in existence.

With regard to the printing on cereal packs, the inks are very varied and some are OK and others dodgy but again if composted in 'normal' quantities, some would 'leach out' whilst the rest would remain as 'trace'.

For the record, I put my beans in the ground at the first sign of the white fungus last year and am currently becoming tired of the spicey runner bean relish that exists in vast quantities as a result!

Hope that helps (and its not just 'old ground'). if it is.....moderator please remove forthwith.

Regards to all my new e-chums. Looking forward to your collective advice and guidance with my plot in the years to come.

Lawrence

Thanks for that, it confirms what I said elsewhere, dare I say it,unpredictable in content, probably not harmful but hardly Big "O". Enough said, end of topic.
Allan

Thanks for that Loz. I'm using an assortment of loo rolls, some have fungal growth, some don't, and the type of fungal growth varies as well. There are some really pretty mushrooms/toadstools in there: quite interesting as a children's growing project in itself!

Carrie wrote:Thanks for that Loz. I'm using an assortment of loo rolls, some have fungal growth, some don't, and the type of fungal growth varies as well. There are some really pretty mushrooms/toadstools in there: quite interesting as a children's growing project in itself!

Lol, now that's why I binned mine. Never again.

It is interesting that some of us regard the fungal growths as fascinating, while other seem to find them disgusting.

One of the few irritations of mushroom hunting is finding perfectly safe, edible fungi smashed to smithereens by the 'it might be poisonous' brigade'. Fear of fungi is remarkably widespread in this country.

Hallo
Are we saying that we should not use the loo roll cardboard any more? I thought they were supposed to be the best thing for starting off seeds etc?
Polly

perhaps we should follow the example of the toddler groups and ban loo rolls and use kitchen rolls instead

Surely it's a personal decision at least for the home gardener. Loo rolls may be good or bad, what is undeniable is that they are not sold for the purpose of growing plants in, therefore they may have content which is harmful maybe even beneficial but either way unknown and not under ones control. It doesn't appear that they may do serious harm. At least we now know better where we stand.
Of course not all of us are endowed with an inexhaustible source of them. I would think that kitchen rolls, even newspaper or any other such material would have to be considered carefully. However any risks that there might be are hardly likely to give a problem once added to the compost heap as would also apply to other paper and card products.In the field of agricultural chemicals there are very strict rules now that one is only allowed to use them for a particular purpose on a designated crop, the commercial sector has a system of allowing "off-label" use which allows for exceptions to be made such as where there is no viable alternative.

richard p wrote:perhaps we should follow the example of the toddler groups and ban loo rolls and use kitchen rolls instead

and that nonsense was in case the little darlings caught nasty diseases from the cardboard!

Presumably just in case some ignoramus wiped their a*** with the cardboard tube instead of the paper it carried.

Pol & All,

You are more likely to come to harm from an empty loo roll from trying to get to the downstairs loo with your trousers round your ankles!

Use 'em and be fascinated by the pin-mould. It is exactly these moulds that are a major contributor to the breakdown of the cardboard that is the reason you use them in the first place i.e. you not fiddling around getting the seedlings out of plastic pots cos you can bung the whole shooting match in the ground and no root disturbance or worse, peat to boot!

Some rolls might contain PVA glue which they give to kids to stick the kitchen rolls together in pre-school!

On moral grounds the I think recycling outweighs the potential low levels of toxin that might find their way into the food chain. Additionally the only likely toxic substance, PVA has been identified as an Oxo-Biodegradable Full Carbon Backbone polymer. That means it aint there after a while. How long 'a while' is will depend on soil conditions but it wont be long.

That said your plastic plant pots will still be there (unless you burn them)in 1000's of years in land fill or more likely round the back of where the shed used to be (before it bio-degraded)!

Hope that helps.

Loz

loznkate wrote:Oxo-Biodegradable Full Carbon Backbone polymer.

Loz, I like that, are you a chemist?
Any other stuff you can advise on as above?
In quite a few thread advice as above would be useful so we know what degrades, how completely and how long it takes.

Regards, Peter.

Peter,

Not a chemist. But I did an environmental chemistry degree for fun (Wasn't that much fun tho). It does mean, however, that I can read and understand (to a degree!) a lot of research papers posted in the scientific journals. When a subject interests I am compelled to read around it.

There's loads of research been done around Environmentally Degradable Plastics (EDPs) and other man-made organic compounds that degrade. Before the thread goes bonkers, that's 'organic' meaning the molecule contains carbon!

Happy to contribute in return for top horticultural tips. I think I'm already in debt to the tune of 'carrots in containers'!

Regards

Loz