Lasagna Gardening

Today I drove around town gathering newspaper, leaves, and rabbit manure for my garden. I've been learning some cool new methods that I'm looking forward to trying out this season. I've read two books lately, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith and Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza.

Smith advocates wide rows and raised beds. He says that the more loose and non-compacted the soil, the healthier plants will be because their roots have room to flourish. Rather than making single rows of plants (where our feet stomp next to fragile roots), he suggests building 3 foot wide rows that are raised above the walking paths. In the rows, we can use companion planting (planting varieties of plants that naturally do well together), and we can be creative about how we plant (rather than boring single rows of the same plant, we can do interesting things like putting lettuces under corn, herbs with tomatoes, etc). Ed has lots of other beautiful and space-saving ideas, as well as info about watering, improving soil, problems, and more.

Lasagna gardening is a no-dig method of layering organic materials on top of the soil to create rich humus in a way that mimics nature (just like a forest floor that continually breaks down and adds to itself). You layer newspaper on top of grass or dirt, then alternate layers of compost, leaves, grass, straw, peat moss, or anything you can think of. Earthworms are attracted to the surface because of the dark, moist environment created by the newspapers, and they do the tilling for us. It is so simple, earth-friendly and back-friendly! The hardest part for me is finding the materials.

Soon it will be time to get out in the garden and create my wide, raised lasagna rows. For now I will continue my search for materials. I've been using my community's Freecycle group to find materials for free. If you haven't heard about Freecycle, look it up to see if there is a group in your town-- it is a group of local community members who give and get things from one another, all for FREE.

Off to build my cold frame now... well, I'll help my husband do it. ;)