Lasagna Gardening / Sheet Composting

    

    For the past few years, my wife and I shared a large garden at my mother's house.  Each spring I would drag out the rototiller to work up the ground, use string to mark some nice even rows, and use her old wheeled garden hoe to dig the rows.  A very traditional way of gardening that worked well for the most part.  After planting, my mother did most of the watering, weeding, hoeing, and harvesting during the day.  She would then share the vegetables with us.  Last fall she told us that it was just getting to be too much work for her and that she would rather just plant a small garden next year.  We of course couldn't blame her, we loved the fresh vegetables, but understood that she did the brunt of the garden work while we worked during the day.  So, we decided to make some garden beds in our back yard.  However, with three kids and both of us working full-time, my wife and I knew that it would have to be something simple that we could easily keep up with.  So, we started looking into some alternative gardening techniques.  We knew we wanted to do things organically, but were open to different methods.  Our first inclination was to make a few raised beds, then we looked into double digging some beds, and finally after reading an article on something called lasagna gardening, we decided that this might be the best option for us. 

    Lasagna gardening is a no-dig, no-till organic gardening method that results in rich, fluffy soil with very little work from the gardener. The name "lasagna gardening" has nothing to do with what you'll be growing in this garden. It refers to the method of building the garden, which is, basically, adding layers of organic materials that will “cook down” over time, resulting in rich, fluffy soil that will help your plants thrive. Also known as “sheet composting,” lasagna gardening is great for the environment, because you're using your yard and kitchen waste and essentially composting it in place to make a new garden.  It basically mimics what occurs naturally in forests to create nutrient rich soil.

    One of the best things about lasagna gardening is how easy it is. You don't have to remove existing sod and weeds. You don't have to double dig. In fact, you don't have to work the soil at all. The first layer of your lasagna garden consists of either brown corrugated cardboard or three layers of newspaper laid directly on top of the grass or weeds in the area you've selected for your garden. Wet this layer down to keep everything in place and start the decomposition process. The grass or weeds will break down fairly quickly because they will be smothered by the newspaper or cardboard, as well as by the materials you're going to layer on top of them. This layer also provides a dark, moist area to attract earthworms that will loosen up the soil as they tunnel through it.

     

    Anything you'd put in a compost pile, you can put into a lasagna garden. The materials you put into the garden will break down, providing nutrient-rich, crumbly soil in which to plant. The following materials are all good for lasagna gardens:

•Grass Clippings                                           

•Leaves

•Fruit and Vegetable Scraps

•Egg Shells

•Cofee Grounds

•Manure

•Compost

•Shredded paper

•Trimmings from the garden

•Peat moss

Just as with a lasagna that you cook, there is some importance to the methods you use to build your lasagna garden. You'll want to alternate layers of “browns” such as fall leaves, shredded paper, and peat moss with layers of “greens” such as vegetable scraps, garden trimmings, and grass clippings. In general, you want your "brown” layers to be about twice as deep as your “green” layers, but you don't need to get real picky about this. Just layer browns and greens, and you will end up with a lasagna garden. What you want at the end of your layering process is a one and a half to two foot tall layered bed. We started our beds in October and were amazed at how much they shrank down over the winter.

                                        

    In the spring when you are ready to plant, just dig down into the bed as you would with any other garden. If you used newspaper as your bottom layer, the shovel will go right through, exposing nice, loose soil underneath. If you used cardboard, you may have to cut a hole in it at each spot where you want to plant something.  Be prepared to uncover a lot of earthworms.  Then just place your plants or seeds right into the ground as you would a conventional garden.  Because the soil is so rich, you will find that you can plant things much closer together than in other traditional methods.

To maintain the garden, simply continue to add some organic material to the top of the bed. Once it's established, you will care for a lasagna garden just as you would any other: weed and water when necessary, and plant whatever you want.

    While you will be maintaining a lasagna garden the same way you would care for any other garden, you will find that caring for a lasagna garden requires less work. You can expect:

•Few weeds, thanks to the newspaper suppressing them from below and the mulch covering the soil from above.

•Better water retention, due to the fact that compost (which is what you made by layering all of those materials) holds water better than regular garden soil.

•No need for fertilizer, because you planted your garden in almost pure compost, which is very nutrient-rich.

•Soil that is easy to work: crumbly, loose, and fluffy, unlike the heavy clay soil we normally have to deal with.

    Lasagna gardening has worked very well for us so far, all the plants look amazing.  We also applied the same method to planting some potatoes and watermelons in Rubbermaid tubs that we had available.  You can see these in some of the pictures posted above.  With the potatoes, you do not have to dig them when they are ready, you just turn over the tub and gather the potatoes.  I'll keep you posted when it comes time to harvest.  For anyone wanting more in-depth information I would highly recommend the book by Patricia Lanza.  We purchased it early on in the process and it explained the process very well and gives you some ideas for different vegetables.