Amazon Box Hack! How to re-use shipping boxes sustainably and waste less!

folks today on the Stony Ridge Farm Channel we're going to show you how to take your old Amazon boxes and use them in your garden for weed control and to put your garden to bed for the winter come along let's have a little bit of fun and give you some great ideas [Music] hey there folks this is Josh Stoney rich farmer welcome back to another gorgeous day here on the Stoney Ridge Farm this is going to be a quick tip Stoney Ridge farmer video I'm going to show you guys what I do to prepare these raised garden beds for winter and how I compost with my chickens right here so raising a garden is not only rewarding for you your family your home and for your tummy and your body it's also great if you have backyard chickens if you can integrate backyard chickens into your operation so come along today I'm going to teach you some stuff and we're going to show you how to use old Amazon boxes to put your Winter Garden to bed [Music] all right folks welcome to the Stoney Ridge Farm this is your first time here this is a first generation Farm project here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina that is a big old pile of soil that I made for my raised garden beds and these are raised garden beds that I made they're four by eight and I milled them right off of the wood Miser Sawmill down here we'll get you some cool footage of that so these boards are made of white oak stay tuned for a future video we're going to show you an awesome product to help defend it's called wood Defender to help defend this against rot so that's coming very soon probably be the next video in this series so I've cleaned the garden beds out it's just about time for fall gardening and I also cleaned out the chicken coop so what we use here is no fertilizer no anything other than organic material and soil amendments so what I have down here at the bottom of the hill is I have the local tree company always brings their Mulch and debris and dumps it here on the farm so we use that for weed control and so we use that for putting our garden beds to bed for the winter now what we're doing is something different and I'm trying a few different things in each garden bed so that you guys and myself can also learn how to not waste so much we are a society of waste and we've got to get away from that so if we can find a secondary use for something like a cardboard box then let's do it so let's get into this garden bed and show you what we've got be sure you stay tuned we're going to go check out the chickens right after the garden bed this is going to be a quick fun video we'll do a little Garden Walk here each one of these garden beds again is a four by eight garden bed in the future you're going to see me build a mobile Coop system out of PVC pipe that I can move from bed to bed to bed so that I can put the chickens in these flower beds or in these garden beds and let them work their way through and get all the goodies out so once this Sprouts up it's going to sprout back in weeds and all sorts of disaster mess I'm going to put the chickens in here and let them pick through it and put that good butt fertilizer that we like so much now this is a custom soil that I built on my own here on the garden beds this has tons of awesome stuff everything from coffee grounds from your local coffee shop to manure horse manure cow manure hay feathers everything and also even eggshells you'll see a bunch of eggshells in this one right here those are just eggshells that's calcium that's what Tomatoes like it helps prevent blossom end rot this is a storage area for right now and these are the Amazon boxes we're going to go over here and show you so I get probably like you guys I get a ton of stuff in from Amazon all the time getting boxes in well I decided to try this this year when we put the garden beds to rest with Amazon boxes so these Amazon boxes right here if we lift up you'll see what's going on underneath and I imagine we may see earthworms this is my first reveal okay so there's old grass all the old grass that was in here is all put to bed it's really really moist what this does is it destroys all those unwanted weed seeds in your plant beds now you can use this as weed prevention once your garden has started so in other words we leave this in it kind of melts down you don't have to take it out just take all the plastic tape off of your Amazon boxes and we get ready to plant your garden just cut a hole in and put your garden plants in there and it will help you control your weeds in your garden if you guys tune into the channel before you'll know that these garden beds were absolutely inundated with weeds totally covered with weeds this is again White Oak you could use a treated Timber if you wanted to you could also use railroad ties I would recommend lining the inside with plastic but we're trying to get away from plastic so you can put plastic sheeting on the top of this and that will also do the same thing but we want it to be able to breathe and that's why we're using our Amazon boxes so we just went through and pulled all of the debris and weeds and mess out of all these garden beds then we went over to the chicken coop and we cleaned out the chicken coop and each year we choose two or three different garden beds and we put all that chicken litter right into our garden bed and that's what this is right here it's going to rot down just like that first box that I showed you and make this beautiful dark Rich awesome soil and we're not using any chemicals guys that's what it's all about so that's how I put the garden beds to bed once a year I will add manure to my garden beds and we've got about 10 beds right now and my plan is to put a greenhouse right here use some of that soil and we're going to extend this and put more beds all the way down through there so we'll have enough two of these garden beds is enough to feed a family of four and to can 30 to 40 quarts of tomatoes just two look at all we have right here now let's go down to the chicken coop real quick and I'll show you guys the chicken coop design and I'll show you exactly what we're doing inside the chicken coop with all the debris that we pulled right out of these garden beds it's really really cool great Innovative idea saving time saving money saving chicken feed and composting doing the right thing so this is the chicken coop and you'll see down in there there's some eggplant all of the debris that you see down in here in the chicken coop is what came out of the garden so as I pulled all the weeds and mess out of there and put it in the chicken coop this is compressed it was about this deep these chickens have trampled it down they've pooped on it they've done everything the chickens do scratched through it and it will slowly decompose down to the awesome butt fertilizer that we like to use so all these stems and stick sticks and weed seeds the chickens will scrape through and they're doing it right now and they will consume every bit that's consumable poop on top of the stuff that's not consumable and then that goes into our garden beds this is my chicken coop design I call it the perfect chicken coop there is an eight by eight run out here on the outside we put the water out here there is a roosting area that's breathable so we're here in North Carolina if we get temperatures down below about the 20 degree Mark I will wrap this up and prevent the wind from coming in on our chickens but we don't need heat for our chickens in the winter and these are the roosting poles so they come up here every night and they Roost inside here this is our laying box you don't want to walk through poop chicken manure to get your eggs so right in here is where all of our eggs are and these are our nesting boxes and it looks like I need to go ahead and get the eggs up so we got one two three four five six seven nesting boxes and seven chickens we could get away with about 14 chickens in in this Coop and we could get away with just those seven nesting boxes you actually only need two or three but we made this big robust and strong and at some point it's going to be mobile and we'll take it throughout the farm as we open the door right here show you guys open the door this is the inside of the coop we've got it layered with straw the straw makes bedding the bedding is what gets raked out and put into a wheelbarrow well check this out it's designed to house the wheelbarrow underneath there's a little board that we pull up right here this is a really cool idea I thought you pull this board up right here you pull out your wheelbarrow which is hidden under there and we just simply take a rake and rake this off into the wheelbarrow and take it right over and put it into those garden beds that's the way I beds to bed for the winter here on the Stoney Ridge Farm now we'll have two or three of these beds that are dedicated to fall crops winter crops things like lettuces and cabbages and stuff like that but mostly we're just going to put these to bed every Amazon box I get is going right in here instead of going in the trash can getting burnt we're going to be recycled we're going to actually recycle them on the farm because it's biologic material that's going to help our soil and it's great for weed control and I don't know how many you guys have planted a garden and got a huge problem with weeds but I have that when you have good soil it loves Garden veggies and it loves weed so guys that's just one way that you can do your garden beds if you don't have raised beds like this you can do this on a larger scale or a smaller scale right on the ground pretty awesome stuff so folks thank you so much for joining me here on the Stony Ridge Farm today I just wanted to show you how I was composting with my chickens a good Innovative way way to utilize these Amazon boxes or any boxes that you get to help put your Gardens to bed and how we use chickens soil manure and all this material to build our soil instead of putting commercial fertilizer on so our food tastes better and it's better nutrient content that's what it's all about thanks guys we'll see you next time on the Stony Ridge Farm Channel please hit that like button subscribe I'd love to have you back here on the farm good times I got to go move the cows [Music] here and sweet oh cool we get to knock the camera off because this thing's too close now get the camera in the mud let's just start this thing off right guys the camera is in your chicken poopy be more gentle now you guys should run from me because I'm trying to shoot a video should make it hard on me hey you want to make it hard on me chickens let's see if we can find a way to make it harder on Stoney Ridge farmer put your Winter Garden to bed Edna stop being so loud give you guys some grub