I have seenthe book is all over the internet and mentioned in home & gardening magazines. The method is sound, I used a derivitive on my gardens. The recipe does not have to be followed with religious observation, most combinations of organic rubbish will do. I built one garden with a combination of grass clippings, spoilt hay with a topping of compost and poop and a layer of earth over the top. You can either store the material up until you make the garden and plant straight in or slowly add it in to the garden as it comes to hand, let it settle and then plant, like I did. Grew some nice potatos on it the first time around.
Has anyone heard of this book or this method?? I wonder what your thoughts are? As I get older, contemplating the massive amount of work that gardens require made me a little sad that I might not be able to always do everything I wanted to do, so I bought this book. It's a lazy man's garden as far as ammending the soil, but the writer has used the method many times with great success. I've only tried one application of this method for an Asparagus patch, but it worked well enough, the soil under the Asparagus is awesome and they grow well. Unfortunately I will have to move them from their East TX patch back here to Garland since my Dad can not keep up with them. He did not go out and pick the spears every day this Spring and they are all growing into new plants. Geez, what's so hard about going out every morning and picking a few spears.....Sigh
Try doing a google search on "no dig" gardening, "sheet composting", "Ruth Stout" or "Esther Dean".
The term "Lasagna gardening" is just a new term for decades old ideas and seems to be seems to be unique to the US as far as I can make out. The idea of no dig gardening/no till/sheet composting has been around for at least
3-4 decades that I can make out and is well known in such systems as organic gardening and permaculture gardening.
The message from "GarlandGrower" contains these words:
No, it's not lazy :-). I've used a variant for many years, (my emtire current garden was made that way) and can assure you that the energey saved by not digging, is still required to fetch and spread the vast amount of material required to first make the beds and then keep topping them up.
I use whatever free materials are closest to hand for that. Starting with free cardcartons colected from various local businesses. In my last garden, I used dead bracken, and green nettles and willow herb. Just across the road there were several rough acres of all three, shoulder high, which I could cut, harvest and carry by hand. In my current garden, what I have to hand, is vast amount of seaweed dumped on the shore during storms. which has to be gathered, fetched and spread. Since lasy November, We've gathered fetched and spread more than 200 plastic sacks of seaweed (the sort of sack that holds 56lb of compost) . Plus, several tons every year, of lawn grass clippings.I am using my own and my neighbours , plus large amounts delivered by two local lawn contractors. They dump trailer loads of it in my driveway and I still have to move it to where it's needed and spread it. In addition to that, I make many tons of compost every year, which also has to be dug out and barrowed to the beds.
It's a great way to garden, building fantastic soil and fertility, and reduces weeding, but don't ever imagine it's "lazy". You'll still need a strong back, stamina, and lots of energy.
Wow, that's quite an endeavor.....I imagine I will not be doing it on such a large scale. I know the lugging and spreading is hard work, but I think the main point of the lady's book is to make things a little easier....and that is what I was hoping for.... By cardcartons I assume you mean cardboard boxes? I was going to use old newspaper from the recycling place for the first layer to keep back the grass, but if I can use cardboard boxes, that will save lugging all the newspaper... Thanks
The message from "GarlandGrower" contains these words:
It makes weeding a lot easier, I'll give her that :-)
I do mean cardboard boxes. I get them from a couple of shops which sell large electrical appliances. Newspaper makes more joins (likely to peek up through the covering and look messy); and it's more likely to blow around, or away, while I'm working (clifftop garden in windy location).
Thanks Janet and to all for you responses... I will be getting started this weekend getting at least half if not all of this plot marked off and kill the grass and weeds and start piling the stuff on... make walkways around and through the garden...move a bunch of cannas and daylilies to my "old" vegetable garden which was only 3x10 and making that longer...then I have to work on growing the grass and killing the weeds in the front half of the backyard...so I'm sure all will excuse me for not doing a veggie garden this year as I have way too much to do to get ready for a great garden next year.
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