My sister uses all those cardboard boxes in her garden. She lays them down over the dirt, then adds leaves and kitchen scraps, if not placed under the boxes. This is all done in the Fall so they have time to deterioate during the winter time, helps draw worms into her garden and the robins love it. When she bought this house, the veggie garden was so hard to dig into that she had to add a lot of leaves and anything else she could to get it to loosen up. Now her garden is very fertile and loose enough to actually plant something. If only she could keep the deer out, the plants might survive the summer.