"Lasagna Gardening
GARDEN & YARD
The basics of a nontraditional method of gardening that is not only organic, earth friendly, and incredibly easy, but will enable you to accomplish more, in less time, with less work...
If someone told me years ago that he or she had found a way to do an end run around the sweat equity of traditional gardening, a way around digging, weeding, and rototilling, a way to produce more regardless of time constraints, physical limitations, or power-tool ineptness... well, I would have checked that person for a head injury. Yet such a system is actually possible, though I never would have believed it if I hadn't stumbled upon the basics myself.
Lasagna gardening was borne of my own frustrations. After my husband retired from the U.S. Navy, we began our next period of work as innkeepers. When the demands on my time became so great that I could no longer do all that was required to keep both the business and the garden going, the garden suffered. I'd plant in the spring, then see the garden go unattended. I needed a way to do it all.
Just when I was about to give up, it happened: a bountiful harvest with no work. I'd planted, late again because of a late spring. And again, when the seasonal demands of the business began claiming all of my time, my plantings were forgotten. In midsummer, I made a much belated foray into the garden. I had to hack through a jungle of weeds to find the vegetable plants—but what a payoff! I discovered basketfuls of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, and egg plant. True, there were also basketfuls of rotted, overgrown, and unusable vegetables (the product of neglect), but the abundance was truly amazing.
To gain some measure of control that year, I simply stomped the weeds flat in between rows and put down cardboard boxes to walk on. The harvest continued, with carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes persisting among the weeds. Stout stems of collard greens pushed the plants up to tower above the mess, despite the native morning glory that tried to hold back growth. Lower-growing Swiss chard also persevered, though I had to cut out the shriveled leaves and pull a few weeds to get to the good growth.
Flower seeds, planted in a border around the garden in the spring, came up and bloomed. As I poked about that messy old garden, I found patches of basil, parsley, sage, and thyme that had done battle with weeds and grass and won. I was suddenly very excited about the possibilities.
And the timing couldn't have been better. The inn had caught on, making my time in the garden more limited. And, as much as I hated to admit it, I was getting older and losing some strength. I was by then living and working alone, so there was no one to run the tiller. I bought a smaller model but couldn't cope with cleaning the carburetor and mixing gas and oil.
Inspired by my no-work harvest, late that fall I began my first attempt to make and maintain a garden without digging or tilling. Using no power tools and little more than what was at hand, I layered for the first time. A neighbor's son had promised to bring me a load of horse manure in a spreader in exchange for pizza and sodas for himself and his friends. This seemed like a fair exchange to me. I removed all the cardboard from the paths and gave him access to back the spreader right up to the garden. He spread about four to six inches of fresh manure on the entire plot. I waded in and covered it with a layer of peat moss.
In the spring I had more weeds (smart weed, pig weed, dumb weed) than ever before, but they were easy to stomp down. I covered the garden paths with cardboard, then set about hand-pulling weeds from the garden spaces, easily keeping them clear just long enough to plant. Once the plants were in, I mulched with compost and peat moss. As the plants grew, I mulched with grass clippings and more peat moss. My garden spaces were smaller with wider paths, and I planted closer. I expected that as the plants grew they would crowd out the weeds. To plant seeds, I created a weed-free planting space with a mixture of peat moss, sand, and sifted compost laid on top of the rather untidy garden base.
The business—a country inn and restaurant—was year-round, but from July 4th to Labor Day I danced as fast as I could to keep up with the heavy seasonal trade. By midsummer, I found myself once again ignoring the garden. Yet, once again, the garden produced more than I expected, though it was still weedy and messy.
There was something missing. I knew I could control the weed growth with plastic or landscape material, but it wasn't what I wanted. I needed a ground cover that would suppress weeds, deteriorate, be easy to come by, and cost nothing. As I lugged tied bundles to the curb for recycling, I found my answer: newspaper.
ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO LAYER
That fall, I covered the entire garden: the paths with new cardboard and bark chips and the garden spaces with two or three sheets of wet newspaper and peat moss, layered with grass clippings and chipped leaves. It was looking good. In fact, it was beautiful-neat and beautiful!
In the spring, I pulled the weedless layers of dark, rich soil aside, right down to the newspaper, and planted.
I took time to add compost, peat moss, and grass clippings as mulch to the plants. It was some year—a great harvest, few weeds, and no work to speak of. That's when I began to think about a garden built on top of the sod, requiring none of the traditional preparation: no lifting the sod, no digging or tilling, just neat layers of organic ingredients left to decompose over the winter.
Once I found the spot—a level, grassy parking lot near a water source—I drew a sketch of a garden of herbs and flowers in a formal Williamsburg design. It was all about measuring: two-foot garden spaces and three-foot paths, all leading to a circle at the center with space for a sundial and thyme garden. While waiting for my daughter, Melissa, and surveyor son-in-law, Bill, to stake out the lines, I stockpiled the ingredients: newspapers, flattened cardboard boxes, wood chips, compost, grass clippings, leaves, rotted barn litter, old hay, horse manure, sand (left over from a building project), and bags of soil amendments bought on sale at the garden center.
When Bill was through with the survey and gutter nails were tied with bright survey tape at corners, I connected them with string.
Next, I laid cardboard on the paths and covered the cardboard with bark chips. I then covered the garden spaces with thick layers of wet newspaper, overlapping the ends, and covered the paper with one to two inches of peat moss. Then I laid a three- to four-inch layer of dried grass clippings over the peat moss and added another one or two inches of peat moss. I continued to alternate layers of waste material and peat moss. Midway through, it struck me that the peat moss was akin to the cheese layer in a real lasagna.
By the time I was finished with all the material I had collected, the garden spaces were 24 or more inches high, and it was well into November. I worked at the last of it until late in the day and quit only when I felt snow covering my head and shoulders. Just before walking away, I sprinkled a dusting of wood ashes on top of the layers. It was like the parmesan cheese you add to the top of a real lasagna just before you put it in the oven.
This was all done on top of the sod—without lifting, digging , or tilling.
IS IT SOUP YET?
My winters at the inn were long and cold. Snow covered the top of the mountain from November until late April. When I took the first spring walk in the gardens, I carried a trowel to check on the frost depth. I poked about in the earth in gardens from the front of the inn to the back by the barn, leaving the layered garden till last. Eventually I found myself standing in front of the new garden. What had been two feet of layered soil amendments was now just about six or eight inches high. I pushed the trowel down through rich, black soil to the paper layer and found most of the sheets gone and another five to six inches of loose earth below. I could plant anything in this much loose material. The lasagna layering had worked beautifully!
When the weather finally warmed, I pulled the soil apart in the new garden and planted herbs and flowers. I continued mulching each time I cut the grass. That's it! No other work—-no weeding, no watering, nothing! I couldn't believe how the plants thrived and how easy it was. I didn't need to worry about garden chores during my busy season anymore.
The guests at the inn admired the new garden, and I shared the process. The old vegetable garden, previously kept hidden, was now a showplace. Folks who admired my gardens could see they were weed-free. I told everyone about the lasagna method, but I could see that few really got it. They either didn't believe me or had no grasp of what it all meant. But I knew. It meant I could be a really good gardener and still be able to keep up with the demands of being an innkeeper. It meant I could put the rototiller up for sale. Best of all, I stopped worrying about getting older and not being able to keep it all going by myself. I could have it all!
For those who are in doubt, I suggest you take a walk in the forest and renew your relationship with Mother Nature. She is the original lasagna gardener, though not as neat as me. In nature, debris drops to the forest floor, and without any help from man, creates layers of dark, rich humus. Tree and wildflower seeds fall into the debris-turned-humus, sprout, and grow.
Unless you live in the forest, you probably want a neater, more organized garden. But to have any kind of garden—neat or otherwise—you first need good soil. Traditionalists would agree on the good soil premise and either crank up th