What is a Lasagna Bed

The basic concept of a Lasagna Bed (also called a raised bed for the uninformed) is that it is a layering system for creating the best dirt you can imagine -- there is no digging (more on THAT one), no tilling, and no weeding.

What you want to do is make layers of organic materials. In a perfect world this layers will sit and stew for a while and in spring they will have blended into the perfect growing medium with zero weeds!

It's certainly not a new concept. I was looking at a Perennial book I got from our library (a very good source of garden books that people forget about) and I came across this technique. I looked at the date of the book and it was 1992.

Obviously someone got the idea of naming this technique "Lasagna Beds" wrote a book and became an instant millionaire, as all authors always do (look at JK Rowling for instance).

So after figuring out the shape of your garden you should lay newspaper on the ground and get it good and wet. I used sections of a paper, perhaps 10 pages thick but I don’t think it really matters as long as you cover every square inch and over lap the papers.

This will create a dark place and without photosynthesize nutrients all plants will die! Thus - no weeds! Well - almost. Some plants take this deprivation as a challenge, like quack grass. I'll let you know how this works. I have heard that quack loves the challenge and sooner or later it'll pop through. At that point I'll take some Round Up and KILL IT. Sorry but I have been in battle with Quack and I give it no sympathy. I want it DEAD.

Donn from the Garden Web forum says it best.

" Cover the grass with cardboard (moving boxes are great, as long as you take the tape off), and soak it down thoroughly. Then start piling organic matter on it; almost anything you can lay your hands on, from lawn clippings to fall leaves (shredded, if possible), from used coffee grounds to composted horse manure. Keep layering it on, preferably alternating between greens and browns (nitrogen and carbon). Pile it at least 18" high, and make the top layer a good carbon based mulch of some sort."

Many Lasagna bed gardeners do the above and then "cook" the bed for a while giving the layers of mulch time to breakdown. This is my goal and that is why I'm starting this process in fall. This reduces the height of the beds and produces high-quality workable soil more quickly.

Cooking the beds is optional though, one nice thing about lasagna beds is that you can layer your bed and plant your garden all in the same day.

Note - start collecting newspapers NOW - it takes a lot more then you would think.

So far I have newspaper/a little peat moss, grass clippings and then top soil. Today I picked up 10 pounds of Starbucks used coffee grounds and will dump that on my bed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

That is basically what a Lasagna Bed is.

I'll start this journey next time with
WOW! This is Quite a Slope! The Story Begins.
-----------------
Going back a little to the last blog about getting started in gardening. I was looking at some photos of when we were building the house (well, WE were not building it, we were watching OTHERS build it) and I came across a photo I took from our deck just after they have put in the top soil.

We had had a large storm, a gully buster if you will with another one on the horizon. Here is the photo. Look at where the "river runs threw it" area. If you look at the Aug 27th blog you will see that this is the exact spot where I put in garden #1.
The question is - how can I fix this water drainage problem. A Lasagna bed would have worked but that fix is in the future.

I also have two bonus photos I took this morning. The first is a close up of some Autumn Joy Sedium showing the tiny little flowers. I'm not real familiar with this plant so I'm not sure what to expect. As always clicking on the photo will enlarge it.

The other one is from a Carefree (is it really) Rose bush we planted. This one is cool. If you left click on the photo and then right click to set as background it should fill the screen! If you want!

A Quickie Back Story

always remember - I AM NO EXPERT

A Quickie Back Story - BEFORE I learned about Lasagna Beds

I have always loved growing things but never took it seriously. I even created a little lawn grass of sod in my office but I have never had a garden. Just never had a good place for one.

When we moved into my very first house it already had "gardens". Long, straight strips of daylilies one after another in a long line outlining our back yard. We also had a tiny bit of baked dirt in the front, not soil but dirt. My wife and I planted a few things there but it all got baked . . . . . except for some lavender that flourished!!

Well, we moved and I was presented with a blank canvas. A yard with absolutely nothing on it. Oh sure the builder had landscapers put in top soil (dead dirt) and planted seed for grass and after a month I had 50% grass and 50% quack grass.

We planted some trees, an Autumn Blaze Maple, two clumps of Heritage River Birch and the first of two Don Wyman Crabapple Trees. And we had some guy from McKay Nursery design a plan for a few spots of the yard but, frankly, I was under whelmed. Everything was so . . . . formal.

This tweaked my brain wondering what was missing, why was I under whelmed. Some primal part of me was whispering, plant it and it will grow (with apologies to Field of Dreams).

Plant? Plant what?? Tomato's? Rutabaga? I'm not real big on veggies. It must mean flowers! So I opened my eyes and started looking at what others have done with flowers and I saw there were some things I REALLY liked and some things I did not like at all. The deciding factor was that I loved gardens that looked lush and almost overgrown. And the beauty of this is that if they are overgrown with flowers, there is no place for weeds to take over!! Have I found the magic solution?

So I went NUTS!!

My very first garden, a test garden if you will, was around my mail box. I dug out around the box and started planting like there was no tomorrow! I used Blue Wonder Catmint, East Friesland salivia, Autumn Joy sedium and Karl Foerster feather reed grass. All look pretty feeble at the moment as it is fall and I did not dead head when they were blooming.

I have heard that all REALLY nice gardens that you see are 3 years or older. Like wine, a garden needs to age.

I then dumped in a big bag of cocoa bean chips and waited. BINGO, everything took off and I would walk out to the little garden beaming like a proud papa. I would pick the tiny weeds even before they would taste sweet sunshine.

After a couple months of my plantes NOT dieing I started my next project.

This would be a larger project and more expensive (who new gardens cost so much!!). I wanted a triangle near the southern border of my lot. We were in the middle of a drought and since this faces south with 100% sunshine I picked all drought tolerant plants.

After shoveling and roto-tilling (which is much different then roto-rootering) the 72 sq feet and with the plants in my garage and with our first rain in 3 weeks on it's way, I started planting. Lavender, Coreopsis, Rue, Purple Palace heuchera, some other type of heuchera, daylilies, more catmint and then again, lots of cocoa chips leaves things.

I was the Jackson Pollock of gardening, random splashes of plants, no REAL design going into it. OH, I had a vague idea but it all changed when I put my first plant into the soil.

I then ringed the garden with rocks that I had found all over the new yard (not seen in this photo).

Then, it rained. And then it rained some more. This was good I thought, flowers like rain. It was perfect for a couple weeks and the garden looked fine and I was happy.

Meanwhile, the south of the US was being called the ring of fire with heat. We in southern Wisconsin were on the very edge, the dividing line between two powerful, warlike armies of air masses.

We were about to become the front line.

In August we average about 3 inches of rain, and from the time I planted my garden to two weeks later we had gotten a little more the 3 inches of rain. and THEN war broke out.

Sunday the 19th 3 inches
Monday the 20th 3 inches
Tuesday the 21st 0.7 inches
Wednesday the 22nd 0.8 inches
Thursday the 23rd 1.6 inches
Friday he 24th 0.7 inches

Six days and 9.8 inches of rain PLUS the 3 inches in the previous two weeks.

I would step on my yard and sink an inch in muck!

The words "well drained" does not enter in any conversation when speaking our our land.

The garden came through "ok" for the most part. The catmint is showing stress because it is on the uphill side and was taking the proverbial bullet of rain as it gushed down our hill. I hope it comes back and figure I'll wait until spring to see if it made it.

Here are some photos of the aftermath - the Heuchera is looking bleak and the catmint, while looking bad has some new green on it. Oddly a different variety of Heuchera (Purple Palace I believe) is doing better, (or is it the other way around). As you can tell THIS catmint looks a little more stressed then the above photo of the mailbox catmint.

The rest of the garden faired OK as you can see the Lavender, Coreopsis are doing fine.



Note to self - write down what is actually IN the garden, don't commit to memory!

The rest seem OK and the mail box garden is fine.

I SHOULD have deadheaded the catmint but that was a new concept to me. Next year! I did shear the coreopsis and it is now reblooming.

SO - with two gardens running I was thinking of spring. I had my yard layout in front of me and there was a spot just begging for a garden. Full sun between the trees.

Lasagna Beds.

Hmmmmm - what could I do NOW that would help me next year. The dirt in my yard is clay-like and not the best for growing. I asked the Garden forum for ideas and was told by no less then 14 people START A LASAGNA BED!

This was yet another new concept. So being an obsessive sort of guy I looked into it.

The short answer is, it's a raised bed with the best dirt you could ever dream of!

And that is where I will stop for now.

Next blog I dive into a Lasagna Bed!