Showing posts with label Lasagna Gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lasagna Gardening. Show all posts

Sunday 6 March 2011

An Introduction to Lasagna Gardening:

На русском огород-лазанья здесь!


An Introduction to Lasagna Gardening:
Good way to recycle paper, cardboard and straw. 
lasagna gardening is a timesaving organic gardening method developed by gardener and writer, Patricia Lanza, which requires no digging, no tilling and no sod removal.


..beds aren't wider than 4 feet so you can reach all your plants without having to walk in the bed (1x2meters & about 15cm deep)
4 feet = 1.2192 metres
one foot = 30.48


you are going to get a bunch of newspapers. 
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.
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.
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just put down a layer of cardboard, then one of grass clippings, then carried on layering with browns (newspaper, card, autumn leaves) with green (grass clippings, weeds).
The brown layer should be twice as thick as the green layer, but I didn't measure.
Thick layers of organic mulch are the main ingredients of every lasagna garden. 


Chopped leaves, grass clippings, straw, hay, sawdust, wood ash, compost, animal manure, newspaper, etc., are just some of the materials that might made up the 
layers of a lasagna garden. Individual materials will vary in each individual's garden according to what is available locally.


How Do You Make a Lasagna Garden?
To make a lasagna garden you stake out your garden site and begin building up the beds layer by layer. The first layer involves laying down something heavy over sod, like thick pads of newspaper or flattened cardboard boxes, to kill the existing grass. The next layer should consist of 2-3 inches of a water absorbent material like coir, or peat moss. I recommend coir because of the growing environmental damage caused by extracting peat from bogs. Next, a 4-8 inch layer of organic material, such as compost, is spread over the coir layer. Another layer of coir, or a peat alternative would be added on top of that, and then yet another layer of organic material, like grass clippings on top of the coir, and on and on until the beds reach 18-24 inches high. Finally, the tops of the piles may be sprinkled lightly with bone meal and wood ash for added phosphorus and potassium.
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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
 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.