Digging up sod is hard. Really hard in fact, when you also include the effort to make this compacted soil into something more usable. Lasagna gardening is a way to avoid digging up the sod, though it still means bringing in soil amendments.
I started some lasagna gardens last week at our new Tuxedo place. Sure there are already plenty of garden beds that need attention, but I if am going to eventually expand the gardens I may as well do it sooner than later-- and fall it the optimal time for getting started so the beds can compost all winter.
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| BEFORE |
There is nothing wrong with a lawn, but I have always been a shade gardener and am willing to put in a great deal of work to create a sunny garden, expand my learning and give me more choices for bright summer colours.
This south-facing garden is already planned to be bright summer colours: oranges, red and yellows in plentiful combination.
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Having just moved cross-country we had plenty of cardboard boxes at hand. I put these down first to kill the grass and keep in the moisture which will help with decomposition and bring more earthworms into the mix. I dug the leaves up from the gutter where they were nice and moist and partly decomposed already rather than raking dry leaves into a pile. It looked like great stuff for this purpose, and all free for the taking.
It was about this point that I began to realize how much work this was and how ambitious my goals were.
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It takes a lot of mulch to cover this, a lot of wheelbarrows full. I cleaned in front of my house and many neighbours' houses in both directions.
Of course they all think I am crazy.
At this point I changed my mind from turning this all into garden and decided to leave a strip of lawn down the middle so the garden can be walked through. I decided based on how much work it was (I am making a second one out front!) and how much material it would take, but in the end I think it turned out to be the right aesthetic decision as well.
Shortly after taking this picture I pulled back the material from the far end so the lawn/path would loop back to the driveway. It has now all been covered with a brown layer, a green layer and a bit of soil, but I need to purchase some compost and peat to layer in.
There just isn't enough grass clippings around for the space I am staking out.
Tomorrow I will be back at it bright and early, even with a bit of snow on the ground.
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Nice work! Your new bed will really transform your yard.
ReplyDeleteThe bed at the south will give a feeling of connectedness with the bed in front of the house, so the whole area in general will be very garden-y.
DeleteI've never had the patience, once we decided I was going to get more garden space to use the lasagna method. I want to dig in right now! You'll be glad you had the patience and determination to do yours that way. We have grass where a sidewalk would be, too.
ReplyDeleteWe typically get a lot of the neighbors' leaves, usually after they rake them for our compost piles. A few days ago, I walked across the street where a neighbor was raking, and she asked if we wanted her leaves. She had surgery awhile back, so I told her to quit raking, and we'd finish up. My husband, Larry mows next door to us, so we went out with tarps and raked leaves from across the street and next door, and got many that were in the street. I wanted to go farther up the street to get the ones that were in the curb, but Larry didn't want to. I think it's cool that you got all those leaves from the neighbors'. Look at all the good exercise you got!
Great to hear of someone else doing something similar. And you are right, it has been good exercise, I can feel it in my shoulders - good practice for the coming months of snow shoveling.
DeleteYour lasagna garden is turning out quite lovely! I was recently given the opportunity to convert a friend's 1/4 backyard of mainly sod into an edible food forest / community garden. I am definitely going with lasagna gardening for most of it! :) It makes things so simple and easy and takes up waaaay less time too. I also think it's nice to just let the soil do it's thing. I found your blog on blotanical and I love it! Check out mine here - regrowroots.wordpress.com
ReplyDeleteI'll be sure to check yours out, thanks for stopping and good luck with your own lasagna garden. I'll be posting some more updates on it soon.
DeleteI've been re-reading all of your lasagna garden posts as I am about to start a lasagna bed of my own. My quandary is where to try it. We have plans for a fairly large bed right at a front corner of our house, but it will be rather large and very obvious. However, my husband has been avoiding tilling the space for me since late spring, so maybe he'll be very appreciative if he doesn't have to do it! Luckily, I can just pop into the woods next to our house and collect all of the lovely dead-leaf and decayed wood soil I want, and my son's been collecting grass clippings when he mows our lawn and the neighbor's.
ReplyDeleteMy other choice is up in the backyard, along the outer perimeter of a small copse of trees. I'd love to get a good shade garden going up there, but digging around all the roots is nigh on impossible! I just don't know whether it would hurt the tree roots. Still need to think about this, but I'm thinking it would be nice to get it going now, in early August, so that I can put some plants in come September, so they'll have time to get established before the ground freezes sometime in late November/early December.
I wonder how your new garden is doing and where you decided to put it. not sure how I missed your comment, but I would have advised whichever one you may not want to use right away. I planted mine days before freeze up and maybe that was part of the problem but come spring it was hardly composted and it was tough for some plants to get nutrients. I even found some plants still alive and growing up from within the compost:lovely white Dianthus I have moved to the Moon Garden. Based on my experience I would say make it in the summer but don't plant in it until the following spring once it has had more time to break things down.
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