Lasagna Garden

Cathy Isom tells us how to make a Lasagna garden bed. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

Lasagna gardening has nothing to do with that Italian cuisine we’re all very fond of. But if done correctly, a lasagna gardening bed could create the perfect soil for some of the veggies that we can plant and one day eat in a Lasagna. Also known as sheet mulching, lasagna gardening is a process of continually layering newspaper or cardboard with high nitrogen rich materials such as fresh yard cutting, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds and even manure. The next layer contains high carbon materials, such as brown leaves, shredded paper and dead vegetation. Then repeat with your newspaper or cardboard. Spray water on top of each layer, then cover the compost pile with a breathable cover or tarp. You can pile your lasagna garden up to two feet high, and then in a few short weeks watch the lasagna garden bed shrink down into the soil as all of the materials begin to decompose and feed the earth. In the end, and usually by the next planting season, with very little effort you’ll have a brand new garden.