Lasagna Gardening ~ Raised Bed Lasagna Gardening ~ Lasagna Composting

You can start a Lasagna Gardening:. one of two ways. You can find an area you want a garden and start, or you can build a raised bed and start your garden there.

If you decide to build a raised bed, which is what I did, make sure that your beds aren't wider than 4 feet so you can reach all your plants without having to walk in the bed. I made mine 3 feet wide which seems to work great for me.

Once you've staked out your new garden location you are going to get a bunch of newspapers. I raided the local newspaper recycling center. (Recycling in a different way)

You are going to wet the newspapers and then lay them over the ground where you want your bed to be. This will keep down the weeds and give the worms great food to eat as things get started.

Put down a thick layer, about 10 to 20 sheets thick and make sure they are completely wet all the way through.

That's how you get started. Next we will look at getting your beds filled with planting medium.

Lasagna Gardening:. is a great way to recycle. You are going to add all kinds of organic matter to your garden. This will produce amazing compost right in your garden.

You need to have a mix of "green" and "brown" organic material in your garden.

Green material is household material like organge peels, tea bags, veggie ends, egg shells ~ anything that came from Mother Earth, can go back to Mother Earth. (NO Meat or meat products though) This category also includes grass clippings. coffee grounds (give your local Starbucks a call ~ they'll be happy to help you recycle their coffee grounds).

Brown Material is mostly brown. :) Straw, hay, chipped tree branches.

It's important to get a good mix of the two color categories to make a wholesome mix for your growing medium.

You can make your planting medium in one of two ways. You can put your organic material right into your raised bed, or you can build a compost pile off to the side and add compost once it's done. Making compost does not happen overnight, so if you build a compost pile you need to plan a year in advance.

If you choose to make your planting medium directly in your Lasagna Garden, that's fine, it works great. Just make layers, like you would with Lasagna.

One layer of "brown" material, say straw on top of the newspaper as a bottom layer, then a layer of grass clippings, then another layer of straw, then a layer of household "greens". Just keep doing that until you reach the top of your raised bed.

Understand that as the organic material composts it will shrink. You will have to continue to add organic material to your raised bed as you go through the growing season.

The layering is the key to Lasagna Gardening:. It's what gives you plants all the different nutrients they need, so make sure you have plenty of both "green" and "brown" material to make your layers with.

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So it's mid may in Kansas. The garden is in and Mother Nature has provided about 5 inches of rain in the last 4 days, and plenty of hail too.

Each day I go out to the garden to make sure the plants are still standing, and so far, so good.

The first night the zucchini took a hit from the hail, but everything has made it through so far.



The cucumbers keep getting blown off the fence, but they grow right back. I think we are looking at some clear weather for a few days to give these poor plant's roots time to dry out.



This year to increase my success rate, and knowing I'm terrible about watering when it gets over 100 degrees (most of late summer) I decided to put in a drip watering system. It was easy to do and now all I have to do is turn the hose on for a while and the plants will get watered. (and then remember to turn it off again.) lol



You will notice the scene looks much the same as the image at the top of the page, just smaller plants.

This year I found out my town does "community composting". Which means everyone brings grass clippings and other compostable things to the composting center, and you can go and pick up a whole truck load of compost for free.

Since I only had one bed I didn't really need a whole truck load, so we used 5 gallon buckets and old cat food bags, which was plenty.