Lasagne gardening

[Jeannine]

Has anyone actually tried  this themselves XX Jeannine

[Jeannine]

[landimad]

???

Jeannie I have never heard of this.
Could you please explain as to what it is and how it is done?

[moobli]

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Lasagna Gardening
No-Till, No-Dig Gardening
By Colleen Vanderlinden, About.com Guide
.See More About:lasagna gardenno-dig gardenstart a new gardengardengarden beds
Finished lasagna garden, ready to plant.
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Raised Bed Gardening
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, essentially, 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.

No Digging Required
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.

Ingredients For A Lasagna Garden
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 perfect for lasagna gardens:

•Grass Clippings
•Leaves
•Fruit and Vegetable Scraps
•Coffee Grounds
•Tea leaves and tea bags
•Weeds (if they haven't gone to seed)
•Manure
•Compost
•Seaweed
•Shredded newspaper or junk mail
•Pine needles
•Spent blooms, trimmings from the garden
•Peat moss
Just as with an edible lasagna, 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 newspaper, peat, and pine needles 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 there's no need to get finicky about this. Just layer browns and greens, and a lasagna garden will result. What you want at the end of your layering process is a two-foot tall layered bed. You'll be amazed at how much this will shrink down in a few short weeks.

When To Make A Lasagna Garden
You can make a lasagna garden at any time of year. Fall is an optimum time for many gardeners because of the amount of organic materials you can get for free thanks to fallen leaves and general yard waste from cleaning up the rest of the yard and garden. You can let the lasagna garden sit and break down all winter. By spring, it will be ready to plant in with a minimum of effort. Also, fall rains and winter snow will keep the materials in your lasagna garden moist, which will help them break down faster.

If you choose to make a lasagna garden in spring or summer, you will need to consider adding more "soil-like" amendments to the bed, such as peat or topsoil, so that you can plant in the garden right away. If you make the bed in spring, layer as many greens and browns as you can, with layers of finished compost, peat, or topsoil interspersed in them. Finish off the entire bed with three or four inches of finished compost or topsoil, and plant. The bed will settle some over the season as the layers underneath decompose.

Planting and Maintaining a Lasagna Garden
When it's time 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 most likely 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.

To maintain the garden, simply add mulch to the top of the bed in the form of straw, grass clippings, bark mulch, or chopped leaves. Once it's established, you will care for a lasagna garden just as you would any other: weed and water when necessary, and plant to your heart's content.

Advantages Of A Lasagna Garden
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 is less work-intensive. 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, especially if your native soil is sandy or deficient in organic matter.
•Less 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.
Lasagna gardening is fun, easy, and allows you to make new gardens at a much faster rate than the old double-digging method. Now your only problem will be finding plants to fill all of those new gardens!

[pookienoodle]

I started a very small lasagna bed last year.
I covered the ground with cardboard and then layered various things including coffee grounds and seaweed.
the worms really went to work on it and it is now being used for strawberries which are thriving.
the underlying soil was clay and it has really improved it.
my only problem is the sheer amount of organic matter it takes to make up the layers.
I will be more doing small beds as I have the materials available.

[cornykev]

I've just this second had one for dinner.  :P      ;D ;D ;D

[coznbob]

Hi Jeannine,

Haven't tried it personally, but think Manics has, seem to remember it being mentioned in a thread ages ago...

Corinne

[gp.girl]

Sounds interesting.

Would it work with bineweed?

And around old fruit bushes?

I agree about the cardboard though 6 sheets will stop almost anything but 1 will breakdown within a year if buried......keeping the weeds down in the mean time though.

[Digeroo]

I suppose the traditional bean trench where you dig a deep hole and throw in as much of the listed materials as you can.  Usually cardboard and paper in the bottom then vegetable waste, grass clippings, leaves, manure, compost, leaves is a version of the same things.    Essential for runner beans.

[goodlife]

"Would it work with bineweed?"

Absolutely not!..their roots will travel far untill they will find a gap where they get into daylight..
I had area under weed control material..with mulch of wood chippings added yearly,,each time over the previous layer..I had such a problem with them..no amount of spraying or weeding worked..after 10 years of battle..this year we dug all chippings out, ripped the weed fabric out and underneath ..10" deep there was carpet of bindweed roots like somebody would have poured bucket of spagetti on..not lasagna ;D,,this weed will just go on and on..
But underneath fruit bushes..lovely...they love it!..and if you use rhubarb leaves under gooseberry bushes as mulch...sawfly will not be problem anymore... ;) ;D

[Jeannine]

Just got a book from Amazon Lasagne Gardening by Patricia Lanza.. it has 17 pages of how to build the beds then 220 pages of "gardening" a really awful usless book!!

Anyway in the 17 pages there was perhaps 4 or 5 with info that I could use so may give it a go in a small bed.

I guess I don't need to explain as Moobli beat me to it.. could not understand the rest of the post though??  Was it an advertisement..confused.

XX Jeannine

[PurpleHeather]

I first thought that you were growing your own pasta when I read the subject. Richard Dimbleby did an April fools joke about the spaghetti harvest in Italy several decades ago and convinced a lot of people that it grew on trees.

My view is that whilst short cuts can be made with gardening for a while, in the end the soil will need a good turn over. Weeds have a nasty habbit of welding themselves into places where they keep coming back. When dandelions, nettles, docks, buttercups, bindweed, and marestails turn up, they intend to stay.

[nilly71]

Jeannine,
I think they have copied the who web page, that's why the first bit does not make sense.
Nice and simple method though, but I wouldn't be able to get enough compostable stuff to cover the whole plot.

This is my version that i'll be using for the waste land i've just expanded into.
I'm diging over the area at the moment to get rid of the bindweed & nettles, then using the Mantis to break it all down, then a layer of cardboard, and a thin layer of horse/chicken and rabbit manure on top to weigh it all down.
To plant stuff i'll either use a bulb planter to give a 2-3" wide hole or hole borer to give a 5-6" hole and fill with compost to plant straight into.

Neil

[Jeannine]

Thanks Niel..

Purplheather, are you trying to tell me that real pasta is not grown on bushes ? I thought it needed a hot country to grow it and that is why we don't see it in the UK,I thought it was a perreniasl version of spahetti squash and as we don't have enough heat   we have to import it or make our own which is not the real thing.

XX Jeannine