I was telling someone how I improved my garden and they had never heard of Lasagna Garden. ( Hi Jennifer.) So, I wrote out what I had done this spring after reading the book Lasagna Gardening by Lanza. I thought, I might as well post it here, too, since I took the time to write it all out. This is actually an improved version of my first edition
Here is what I did.
I worked on one 4 foot by 8 foot bed at a time:
First I laid down newspaper over my very poor soil. I laid down probably 4 - 6 layers of paper... though I think I was being skimpy. I went to the recycle place and picked up boxes of it. I didn't use the brightly colored sheets of newspaper. Most printers now use soy inks, but you don't want too much of that shiny colored paper in your garden. The paper is to block all the weeds from coming up out of your soil. It also attracts earth worms which I no longer had any of ... but now I have plenty.
Next. I laid down 6 inches of FRESH horse manure. Yes, I know what they say! but I have a horse that keeps pooping and I didn’t have aged stuff. We always use it up... It was lumpy and hard and gross. My girls faithfully brought up wheelbarrow loads of it . (And eventually they had brought up 30 loads. Then their grandfather and Uncle helped them bring up 30 more.) I wet it really well!!!
Next we mowed all the lawns and dumped all the grass clippings on my pile of manure until I had 3 inches of it. I watered it well because it is very DRY here.
Next we went to someone's house and raked all their leaves. I brought them home and used my lawn mower to chop them up and dumped them on my garden... about three inches. Again, I watered it well.
Then I mowed up some old moldy hay... had the kids clean out the wood shavings from the rabbit barn, etc... and dumped that on. Wet it down.
Then I bought two of the big bags of peat moss from Wal-Mart (cheapest place I can find it) and spread that on my bed. And two bags of cheap aged steer manure. Wet it down.
Over the top I sprinkled a little wood ash, a little bone meal and some calcium.
I took a black plastic and covered the bed. I used old fence stakes to hold my plastic down and let it "cook" for as long as I could. Some beds got 8 weeks, some beds got 6 weeks, and some beds were planted right off. If I had done it in the fall I would have had a lot of time and it would have been perfect. However, I didn't know in the fall. BUT I can say there has been little difference between my first beds and my last beds. Except that the first beds were lower than the last beds because they had more time to settle and rot. All of them are made differently because I would run out of hay or straw, or leaves or whatever... Some had more weed clippings than others. I didn't have any compost to start with. So only the last bed got compost. My zucchini bed is mostly fresh manure with some ground up old hay with my trusty lawn mower.NONE of my plants have burned.I thought at first they were, but it was burn from the sun when I first put out my plants.
My garden is happy. If you go right to my very first or second entry on my blog you will see the beds before they were planted. My husband is so impressed with my garden this year.
You got the right idea there! Our soils have been sorely depleted of minerals everywhere due to man's raping ways... (greed). We did the same things with our raised beds and have had much better results too. A _little_ sprinkling of salt (minerals!) is helpful in the beds as well, (but this WILL burn! Careful not to use too much!) Also, we always bury our used bones from the kitchen in our beds. (Usually when the dogs have finished with them first.) And well rotten wood is full of minerals too. Pulpy stumps (especially brightly colored pieces) are very full of minerals. The more rotten the less composting time they'll need... Just some more ideas for next year!
Oh, and another thing I wish we had done when we made our beds would have been to bury a length of old hose in the bottom (probably just on top of the green manure). If we had punctured a bunch of holes in it first, and left one end out, we could have set up an arrogation system quite easily. As it is, we have to set up a sprinkler on the garden beds quiet frequently and a lot of water is lost to evaporation before it even reaches the roots. Oh well, live and learn I guess!
God bless your family and your wholesome pursuits!!
