Upon reading the title, you would probably start thinking about a garden that grows ready-made lasagna or a garden that grows lasagna ingredients. Well, you're absolutely wrong with every assumption. Lasagna gardening is a horticultural method. It may sound appetizing but it's basically a procedure that helps establish a new garden bed.
An organic gardening method that helps save time
Creating a lasagna garden can certainly help save you some time. The technique works, as it doesn't require any digging, tilling nor removing of sod. It may sound a bit sensational but it's quite effective. Now, it's also called 'sheet composting' as this is the type of garden that is established by means of layering ingredients.
How to use this gardening method
Organic gardening in this manner will require you to just start and put on a first layer of organics. Your organic materials can be in the form of newspapers or cardboard. Also, these should be placed on top of your new garden bed's soil. And right after this, you may proceed by watering this specific area. Watering will actually help keep the layers in position, and to also help encourage proper decomposition (adding in some topsoil can also speed up the process).
Now, the next few layers ingredients can be taken from either your kitchen or garden wastes. These can be your old coffee grounds, tea leaves and tea bags, seedless weeds, days old manure from plant-eating animals, seaweed, pine needles, crushed eggshells, fruit or vegetable peels, fallen leaves, grass or any other yard trimmings, peat moss and more.
The importance of alternating your lasagna garden's 'layers'
It is essential that you alternate the layers of your lasagna plot. And you should also be able to fill-in your brown and green materials in between sheets, as these will be your carbon and nitrogen-rich organics. Your 'browns' can be composed of newspaper strips, peat moss, pine needles and fallen leaves. Your 'greens' on the other hand can be from grass clippings and vegetable peels.
You can finish your bed by topping it off with at least four inches of topsoil or finished organic compost. Also add in some mulch on top of the bed as a finishing touch (cover the bed with at least 3 inches worth of mulch). And as soon as you're done creating your new bed, it will then be set for planting anything that you want. When lasagna gardening, also note that the bed will still settle throughout time since the layers below will still breakdown.
James Shaw is an organic gardener and a worm farm enthusiast. Save money and go green by raising red wigglers through worm composting. Visit Uncle Jim's Worm Farm website to read more about organic gardening!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_W_Shaw
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