Lasagna Gardening

Lasagna Gardening. It is not about growing a garden so you make lasagna, although you could choose to grow those plants. It is a no till, no weeding and no digging type of garden.

I checked the book out from the library. The author tried this method of laying wet newspaper, followed by peat moss, organic matter, more peat moss, organic matter. You can make as many layers as you want. If you make the bed in the fall you can cover it with plastic to help it "cook." In the spring you have beautiful dirt to plant in. She ended up throwing her rota-tiller away.

I have these visions of beautiful beds filled with flowers, a cutting garden, bulbs, perennials and some vegetables in there too. But if you have ever scene PA soil, it is clay and rocky. Even when you do rota-till the ground is still hard and weeds seem to find there way back. I want the kind of dirt that looks like it came out of a bag, only with out paying for it come out of a bag.

Plus I have grassy areas that I would like to turn into gardens. I don't own a rota-tiller. We have ended up asking a neighbor to come over and do it for us in the past. This book really appealed to me.

So we tried it. It was great. And the best part is we recycled half of the ingredients we used. And this was one job the boys could actually help with.

The first step was marking out the space. We used painters tape to mark where we wanted the garden. This is in my front yard.

Our next step was to soak newspapers and cover the grass. We soaked the newspaper in water from our rain barrel.


The next step was to cover the area in peat moss. Well this is our version of the idea.
I then called a friend who owns horses. She had plenty of manure, the factory is always open. I took a pick up load home. The remainder I put in a small pile behind my garden to save for the next project. At this point is just looks like dirt or mulch and I don't even think the neighbors suspect it. We did see some white butterflies flying around. I believe they help with decomposition.

The next thing I did was put some top soil on top. We did the condensed version of the idea from the book. She uses more layers, but this seemed to do the trick for us.

I did go back and add some mulch around my plants to help hold in the moisture. I forgot to take a picture of my garden later in the summer for you. Our garden did pretty well considering it did not get planted until July. I harvested basil and made pesto. I got a few sunflowers. And my swiss chard did very well. I got several cuttings from it. Next year I just need to start earlier.

I have big plans for my gardens in the years to come. Next year I want to try more veggies. I want to do another bed by the road and plant wild flowers, black eyed susans and daisies and such. I have already got a jump start on my newspapers.

I should also mention that I started one last March on my rocky bank. I never had to weed it all summer.