Openly Balanced moved!  Or at least I did.  Fortunately, I only had to move down the street into an identical house.  But now we own it, which has been a surprising shift (more on that later).  But it was still a ton of work – many small trips back and forth and increasing disorientation about which things got moved and where everything ended up.  Also, my computers died.  Both of them – first my primary computer and then my backup.  It was like having a piece of my brain ripped out.  Sometimes technology is not your friend.

I’m sad to be leaving my lasagna garden after putting in the time gathering and layering browns and greens.

Bye, Lasagna Garden

But the soil in the beds at the new house is really good, and I inherited some strawberry plants that look like they will come back and do nicely this year.  This house gets more sun than the old one down the street, although it still suffers from some poor development choices (more on that later too).  But my favorite thing about the new house are these…

Pear, plum, apple, fig.

Not sure which is which, but even if I hated the house (which I don’t), it would have been worth it just for the trees.

So anyways, I still feel pretty disjointed and behind on… well, everything.  But I’m back.

The class was held at the GRuB “farmhouse” in their beautiful main room. (Next to one of the coolest kitchens I have ever seen – I kicked myself for not bringing my camera!)  Caitlyn Moore walked us through the basics of seed saving – fairly complicated, but absolutely crucial work – and basic garden planning.

Seed Savers Are Our Unsung Heroes

I came away from the class even more convinced that we owe what is left of our food security to a small band of intrepid individuals who have dedicated themselves to preserving varieties of food crops that would be driven to extinction in the face of corporate-driven market forces.  Seed saving is an essential part of this, and I am grateful for all those skilled gardeners who have joined the effort to preserve heirloom crops and livestock.  (Also, savings seeds helps you weather situations like this.)

Aside from all the wonderful information about seed saving, plant genetics, and calendar and grid garden planning, I learned two other interesting things.

1.  I don’t know anything about gardening.

Houseplants love me, but I have never, ever gardened.  I have definitely never grown food.  This is all new to me.  That means I ask stupid questions, such as “If my garden is mulched with wood chips, do I have to remove all the wood chips before I plant anything?”  I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I know enough to know that it’s a stupid question.  How do I store soil and compost and all the things they say you need?  Where do I even get it?  How long can it sit around before it gets weird?  What’s the deal with thinning, and why wouldn’t I just plant them that far apart to begin with?  More really basic, kind of stupid questions.

2.  I know quite a bit about gardening.

I really do.  I know about the leaf, root, flower, fruit rotation.  I know about alleles and pollination and gene expression.  I understand companion planting and feel fairly confident that I could create a garden plan that incorporates it.  I know how to plant potatoes in a way that doesn’t require a ton of space and intensive labor.  I know about nitrogen fixers and cover crops and till and no-till.  I know that there’s a good chance that my greyhounds will eat my tomatoes.

Basically, I know weird things about gardening.  I understand some of the more advanced concepts, but have massive holes in my basic, practical knowledge.  And unfortunately, I don’t think knowing about gene expression is actually going to help me grow food.  I suppose all of it will be useful in the long run, but right now, I just want someone who will answer my stupid questions without making fun of me too, too much.

Poor Google.  It must have to put up with an awful lot of stupid questions.

When we left off, I had a big pile of craziness in my driveway: compost, grass clippings, leaves, rocks.  Every time I saw my next door neighbors, I felt guilty.  They are lovely, kind people with precious, polite children and a carefully tended front yard.  Pretty much the opposite of my kind of chaos.  It was time to get this stuff out of my driveway and into my garden where it belonged.

The Basics

The fundamental idea of a lasagna garden is first to place a layer to discourage weeds, and then layer greens and browns up and up and up towards the sky.  As I mentioned in Part 1, this is also a great time to define the boundaries of your space, along with any paths you might want for traversing your garden later on.  Ideally, once you start layering, you don’t want to walk on your layers.  The light, fluffy layering system allows the garden to do its decomposition thing, and gives you a rich, soft medium for planting in the spring.

Step One:  Weed Blocker Layer

First, place your newspaper, cardboard, packing paper, or whatever you are using for this bottom layer.  If you are using newspaper, it should be 4-6 sheets thick throughout.

You will see I have my wheelbarrow full of rocks close at hand.  As I started placing my bottom layer, I decided that a good way to keep my paper from blowing around would be to anchor it on the edges with my rock border.

About halfway through the first layer, I ran out of newspaper (see tips at the bottom of the post for more on this).  I ended up having to spontaneously unpack several boxes of books so that I would have cardboard to cover the rest of my garden.  I still think the finished layer turned out well.  You may notice that I papered around the existing plants.  I did this for two reasons.  First, we’re renting so I don’t really feel comfortable ripping out existing things.  Second, I don’t know what I’m doing or what they are, and I generally try not to kill things when I don’t know what they are.

(By the way, rock borders only keep the paper around the edges from blowing away…)

Step Two: Brown Layer

Your brown layer goes directly on top of your paper layer.  You want your brown layer to be thick – we’re talking anywhere from 3-6 inches.  My brown layer is dried leaves, but there are plenty of other materials (see Part 1) that work as well.

Step Three: Green Layer

Next, layer your greens on top of your browns.  You want your green layer to be at least a couple of inches deep – about half as deep as your brown layer.  My greens were mostly grass clippings and manure-based compost, with a few kitchen scraps thrown in for good measure.  (And yes, the “green” layer is actually brown.  Go figure.)

This is where having paths becomes really helpful.  I didn’t put paths in my bed, as I have no clue what or where I’m eventually going to be planting.  I tried to keep the tromping to a minimum.  Shh… don’t tell anybody.

You’ll notice leaves poking through my green layer.  It was a really windy day, and as I was laying my greens, the wind was picking up leaves and throwing them all over.  Good times.

Step Four: Repeat until your bed is deep enough or you run out of stuff.

That’s right.  Just repeat.  Brown layer, green layer, brown layer, green layer, brown layer, finishing with a green layer.  You want your finished bed to be 18 – 24 inches deep.  However, it will compact down a ton over the following weeks.  I repeated until I ran out of stuff.  My bed didn’t end up quite as deep as I would have liked – much closer to 18” than 24” – but the compost was gone so I called it a day.

Some tips from my haphazard experience:

• Get more than you think you need.  Unless you have some experience with landscaping or are just better at estimating spatial relationships than I am, get more than you think you need.  Of everything.
• Don’t procrastinate.  You’ll end up with this big pile of grass, leaves, etc.  It starts to decompose which, after all, is what it’s supposed to do.  But it’s supposed to do it in your garden, not your driveway.
• Watch out for wind.  Don’t think you can put down your newspaper layer and then go have lunch.  I’m convinced that nature thinks wind is incredibly funny sometimes.
• Just get it done.  If you’re anything like me, it’s not going to be perfect.  That’s okay.  Think of it as practice for the rest of life’s imperfect projects.  And develop a sense of humor, because from everything I’ve been reading about gardening, you’re going to end up needing one.  (Ha ha, the deer ate my whole garden.  Ha.  Ha.)
• Particularly for those who live in the Pacific Northwest, but possibly applicable to others as well:  Ignore the rain.  It’s just water.  You’re not made of sugar.  You won’t melt.  And if you wait for a clear day, you’ll never get anything done ever.  And I know, wet feet = cranky.  So invest in a cute pair of rain boots and get a move on.

If you want to read even more about lasagna gardening, you might want to check out this great article at Mother Earth or the longer Lasagna Gardening book.  All in all, it was free, fun, easy, and infinitely better than pulling weeds or double digging.  Now to see if I can actually get anything to grow…

• All Things Eco Blog Carnival at Focus Organic

Now Hyperlocavore needs your help.  Creator Liz McLellan has plans to expand the services and tools Hyperlocavore offers its members, while still providing the user-friendly yardsharing network we have come to know and love.  She has opened a Kickstarter Project to fund the new site developments.

Here’s the kicker with Kickstarter (har har).  If donations are not received for the entire project by the project deadline, Hyperlocavore gets nothing!  No funds at all.  So it’s a race to see if we can get this project fully funded by the deadline.  That’s $6,200 by March 28th.

$6,200 is a lot of money, you say.  That’s a lot of money for a website.  But not really.

How much is $6,200?

2,145 gallons of gas saved as yards are turned into gardens all over the country.

365 days a year that you’ll see your yard with different eyes, knowing that dinner is waiting to be harvested.

248 insurance co-pays for diagnosis and treatment of type 2 diabetes.

13 kinds of vegetables you’ll learn to cook that you had never even tasted before.

A tiny fraction of the cost of a single food recall.

$6,200 = countless new people connecting and learning from each other, remembering what “community” really means.

So what do you think?  Can you help give Hyperlocavore a kick start?

I have spent hours pulling weeds.  But you know what?  They just come back. And my soil was still looking crummy and nothing looked like a happy place for growing things.  Yes, I did have this impression that I would somehow pull weeds in the fall and be all ready to plant in the spring.  I am a garden noob, is what I’m saying.  Finally, I decided to take a word of advice from Hyperlocavore’s Liz McLellan and go the lazy person’s route.  No-till.  Lasagna garden.  A gorgeous, wormy, happy plant home for spring.  And the best part?  No weeds!

So here we go – how to build a lasagna garden the easy way.  The frugal way.  The broke way.  The lazy way.  Lasagna Gardens for Dummies, Part One.

(When I told my husband I was going to make a lasagna garden, he asked if that was where all the nutritious lasagna comes from.  I said yes, but I’m pretty sure lasagna grows on trees…)

What You Need

• Newspaper, packing paper or cardboard.  If you use newspaper, don’t include the glossy pages.  Same with cardboard.  No weird, glossy cardboard.
• Green layers.  This could include vegetable scraps, compost, grass clippings, weeds, manure, seaweed… you know, green stuff.  Compost isn’t green, which makes it the exception that proves the rule.
• Brown layers.  Dead leaves, peat moss, straw.  Even more newspaper is also an option for your brown layers.

Now, here’s my little thing.  We rent our house.  For a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here, I’m pretty cranky with the owner right now.  I don’t have a lot of incentive to invest money in this house.  Not to mention that with the hubby deployed and me underemployed, I am trying not to spend too much money on my “pet” projects.  Therefore, I decided that I would build my lasagna garden – in fact, do everything – as cheaply as possible.  So I set out to get everything for free.  I honestly didn’t think I’d pull it off.

But, guess what?  I did!  Total garden cost so far:  $0  (No seeds purchased yet.)

Where To Get It – Free!

Below is a list of the components of my garden and where I got them.  To be honest, it was way easier than I thought it was going to be.  I thought for sure that I would end up buying something – some bags of compost or a bale or two of straw.  But I didn’t need to.  However, I didn’t use all of the potential browns and greens from the list above.  But I would imagine there are ways to get them for free as well.

Newspaper: While I don’t get a daily or weekly newspaper, I was able to collect a pretty decent stack over several months.  Weekly grocery circulars, co-op newsletters, community college brochures, and used community papers accumulated in my garage.  Several grocery stores in my community have recycling drop boxes in the parking lots, and I went dumpster diving for recycled paper.  I also asked around at local coffee houses.  The employees were more than happy to save any extra community and advertorial papers for me.

Cardboard: We just moved.  Enough said.  If you’ve ever moved, you know where to get boxes for free.

Packing Paper: Like I said, we just moved.  But the kind folks at the Olympia Food Co-op also offered me their packing paper from produce boxes when I inquired about newspapers.  So nice!

Compost: I got my compost from someone on Freecycle.  If you don’t belong to a local Freecycle group, you should definitely go check it out.  When we moved here, most of our boxes and packing paper went via Freecycle to someone who was moving.  And when I lived in DC, much of my furniture was acquired (and then rehomed before I moved to WA) through Freecycle.  And I got my compost from a nice lady on Freecycle.  All I had to do was drive down and pick it up.  I got compost and she got the giant pile of compost out of her yard.  Win-win.

Grass Clippings: I mowed my lawn.  I saved the clippings.  I let them sit in a giant pile in my driveway and get rained on for days.  I’m sure my neighbors really appreciated that.

Dead Leaves: These came from the huge tree in my backyard.  And I saw someone offering leaves on Freecycle, so there you go.  Also, I have a feeling my neighbors would have let me rake and take their leaves for free.

Rocks: Notice how there is no garden border in the picture above.  I’m a girl who likes her boundaries and  I wanted my garden to have boundaries too.  The answer was a horse-owning friend.  An hour with a wheelbarrow and I had enough rocks to edge my garden, and my friend was glad to have them out of her pasture.

So there you go!  You’re all set to build your lazy lasagna garden.  Next week:  What do I do with all of this craziness in my driveway?

• How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 2

Cabbages in Tomorrowland!

Tiny peppers, strawberries, and… gardening-type people, help me out.  What are those little trees in the back?

Bad picture of beautiful lettuce.  (This is under the track for the now defunct Rocket Rods.)

So pretty!

The best part of the event was definitely the panels. The event included a full day of panels and presentations on everything from gardening in small spaces to raising goats, bees and chickens (I wasn’t allowed to go to this one – we don’t need any more furry family members!). One presentation was especially exciting for me, since I got to be a blogger fangirl for the first time ever!

Two of my favorite bloggers were there, giving a presentation on small space and container gardening. And what a topic for them! In case you are not familiar with them – and you should be! – the Shibaguyz are a pair of guys with a pair of dogs who are doing some amazing things with urban and community gardening in Seattle. Once you take a look at their Jungle, you realize that you have no excuse to not grow things.

I came out of the day’s presentations reinvigorated and inspired to come home and take on My Project. Time to stop writing about everyone growing their own food and actually put my shovel where my keyboard is. But then we pulled into the driveway and my excuses sounded more like reasons again.

You see, while we are not technically “small space” gardeners, we are rental gardeners. I can’t put a big square bed in the back. I can’t build raised beds because it will kill the grass. And we don’t know how long we are going to be here.

But what is most relevant at the moment is that our house has stood vacant for a year.

We inherited this.

And this.

And also this bed over there (notice the neighbor’s pretty beds in the background).

I know there’s a juniper in there. I think that tall thing may be a very unhappy rose bush. That third bush thing – who knows? Plus lots of clover, grass, dandelions, and those big tall spiky weeds.

We’re not short on space. I just somehow have to take it back from the weeds.