The Permaculture Book Giveaway is now wrapped up and we have winners!

Congratulations to Kristen Hannum, Kevin Bettencourt, and Buffalo Mary.  Your books should be arriving soon.

Thanks so much to everyone for their entries.  Can’t wait until the next one .

Related posts:

1. Book Giveaway! Four Blogs, Three Permaculture Books

Once upon a time, four green bloggers decided to get together and do some giveaways.  Once upon a time happened to be today and I happen to be one of them .

Today’s giveaway is permaculture focused.  I’m currently trying to learn a little more about permaculture because, frankly, it just makes sense to me.  I LOVE systems and permaculture is all about designing and using systems to your advantage.

But the more I learn, the more I realize how set in its ways my mind is.  My brain takes comfort in the idea of an annual garden and its straight rows.  Those rows = my rut.

These books will help nudge your brain out of its rut and then teach you how to get started.

Permaculture Books – The Giveaway

Urban Homesteading, Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living by Rachel Kaplan and Ruby Bloom.

A permaculture classic and a great introduction to permaculture.  Practical tutorials, permaculture theory, gorgeous pictures.  Awesome.

Edible Estates by Fritz Haeg, Will Allen and Diana Balmori

Look at the cover of this book.  Just look at it – I so badly want my lawn to look like that!  (Also, for some reason this book reminds me of Monopoly.  One more house on Marvin Gardens, please.)

Getting Started in Permaculture by Ross and Jenny Mars

One farm, 50 projects scalable to your yard, your garden, your life – a different kind of introduction to permaculture.  Hands-on and ultimately useful.  Set aside an afternoon and put a little more permaculture in your life.

How To Enter

In order to enter, you need to go and leave a comment on the giveaway post at EACH of the participating blogs.  One comment per blog = one entry.  Your comments must be there by Friday, July 22nd.  But really, you know you’ll never get around to it if you don’t do it now. So run down the list below and leave your comments!

We will select three winners, one for each book.

1. Suburban homesteading, worm raising, organic gardener Brad from Highly Uncivilized. (He makes his own hard cider. How freaking cool is that?)

2. Chemical-free urban beekeeper and farmer Mil at Urban Farm and Beehives.

3.  Eco-friendly expert Clare from EcoFriendly Expert.

4. Me!  Comment here.

Good luck and happy gardening!

NOTE:  The book giveaway has now concluded.  Thank you all for your comments and entries!  Winners will be notified by e-mail.

Related posts:

1. Book Review – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
2. The Transition Handbook Review & Giveaway

As some of you may remember (if you’re still around from last year in spite of my hiatus, I <3 you), last year I planted garlic.  We were in the middle of maybe moving and the whole season ended up being weird, but the garlic… the garlic came in a pot from the other house.  And it lived out front and I tended it and cared for it and harvested the scapes and made it into pesto.  And even though there were only four little garlics, there was much love.

These guys.

And then I forgot about them.  I didn’t actually forget, I just never really bothered to look up when to harvest garlic.  And it seemed like the ground was probably just as good a place to leave them as my fridge or under my counter.  After all, it’s dark and cold in my fridge and it’s dark and cold in the ground, right?

Ok, so I forgot.  Until it was way, WAY past time for me to harvest the garlic.  And actually I mostly remembered about harvesting the garlic because I realized it was past time for me to be planting garlic AGAIN for this year.

In (sudden, belated, completely pointless by now) great haste, I raced out the door and discovered… Those guys.  Looking pretty much just like that.  Super cute and resprouted for this year.  Awesome.

Why am I the biggest procrastinator of all time??

I did it with seeds too.  My awesome neighbor does seed orders every year and offered (twice now – this year AND last year) to let me piggyback on his order.  Last year he just flat out gave me seed potatoes because he is sweet and I am pathetic – the seed potatoes that became the potato trees that are now, I am happy to report, replanted in their condo!

I totally failed at piggybacking, or ordering seeds, or anything seed related.  Which, as DH pointed out with only a hint of snarky sarcasm, is probably an ok thing because… oh wait, I still have ALL my seeds left from last year.  And a few from the year before.

There’s a lot of things on which I could blame my continuing failure to garden.  The marriage, the deployment, the rental, the move, the redeployment (fancy Army term for them coming home), vacation, unpacking.  All of these are actually fairly reasonable excuses for having planted nothing but some herbs, two tomato plants and a potato condo.

But the real truth is that gardening intimidates me.  It’s overwhelming and scary and… also scary.

And I think the idea of putting down roots scares me.  The longest I’ve been in any one place since high school is three years.  A year and a half is a long time to be in one house (one city even!), and that’s what we’re coming up on this summer.  The idea of putting something in the ground and trusting that I’ll be here to see it grow is somehow weird and scary.  And that’s not something that comes from having “the Army might move us at any point” looming over my head.  (They might. That’s life.)  It’s my thing.  My weird.  My scared.

But fortunately, I still have those seeds from last year and the year before.  So the germination rates might be a little wonky.  That’s ok.  I stored them well and… we’ll see what happens.  If they grow, they grow.

If not, heck – it’s effectively a first year garden.  I’ll take it.

If you’d like to share, talk to me about your gardens and your hearts.  I’d love to hear what your garden – if you have one – is to you.  If you don’t have one, is there something holding you back?

Related posts:

1. Seed Saving, Garden Planning and Stupid Questions

Happy Spring, everyone!

Lots of catching up to do around here – and, first up – the potato condo.  Many of you may remember my major garden experiment last year (let’s face it, in spite of extensive mental staging, I didn’t end up getting much actually IN the ground).

For the most part, the potato condo went pretty well.  We ended up going out of town for two weeks during peak growing season.  Because I felt like our housesitter was overburdened already, I did not ask her to add boards and soil to the condo as the potatoes grew.  That may have been a mistake, as when I returned the potatoes were huge!  There is a good chance that I hurt my yield by failing to keep up with the growth there.  Live and learn.

Lesson #1: Keep up with potato growth.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver mentions that when you’re running a farm, going on vacation during growing season is basically impossible or must be impeccably timed.  Good thing it was just a potato condo and we weren’t actually depending on it as a major food source during the fall and the winter.  But point taken.

Actually, it’s a really good thing we weren’t depending on it, because….

I Am A Super Procrastinator

I am recovering perfectionist.  I’m a work in progress (aren’t we all?) and while I’ve gotten so much better than I used to be, the perfectionist-procrastination definitely still gets me sometimes.

The garden has been a big one for little ex-perfectionist me.  I have a tendency to wait until AFTER I should have harvested whatever it was.  It’s like I have to wait to see what WAS the perfect moment that tomato (or cut that perfect baby basil – totally waited too long on that one) in order to be able to recognize it.  Perfect for next time, basically completely useless for this time.

This is one of those places where the internet really isn’t helpful.  It’s so hard to explain what something should feel, smell, look like over the internet.  And everyone has a different opinion or trick or method – great for experts, terrible for beginners.  So my perfectionist procrastination won out.

Lesson #2: Just freaking harvest it already.  Stop being such a paranoid baby.

So Many Potatoes

In spite of all of it, the potato condo was a huge success.  I ended up with so many potatoes, a little weird from staying in the ground for so long, but still – so many potatoes!  I harvested, washed and dried them, cured them, and stored them lovingly in my pantry.

We ate some of them – they were delicious.  But then one day I opened up my pantry, heart intent on baked cajun fries and – oh no! – potato TREES.

Lesson #3: store my potatoes colder.  Oops!

The good news is that they’re all sprouted and ready to put back in the ground to try again this year.  Woohoo!  I’ll totally do that any day now, I swear.  /procrastinate, procrastinate…

How is everything going in your garden?  Any repeats from last year or new projects for this year?  Are you as behind as I already am?

Related posts:

1. How To Build A Potato Condo
2. Garden Update

As many of you may know, I tried a little bit of gardening this year.  Unfortunately, due to moving, deployment, and a crippling anxiety about trying new things and failing spectacularly, my garden ended up being much smaller than originally intended.  So to begin with, I have a small list of garden failings for the year.  I’m sure my closet therapist would tell me to be more forgiving, but they feel like failures and I might as well call a duck a duck.

Some Garden Failings

Bowl full of Seeds: There’s a bowl of unplanted seeds on my kitchen table, serving as a daily reminder that I didn’t pull this off.  They also are peeping quietly from their packages about how if I want to have a chance of them germinating next year, I need to get them into proper storage um… beyond yesterday.  But there they sit.

Fruit Trees: I totally did not realize that fruit trees required some measure of attention and care during the growing season.  From the aphids in the spring to them dropping tons of leaves in a desperate attempt to solicit some type of attention (read: water) during the few very hot, dry weeks of summer, I did not do well with my fruit trees.

There were some other little things too – not trimming back the bush near my strawberries so they were stunted and sad, planting things that really don’t do well here, not protecting little plants from my marauding dogs – but for the most part those were the big ones.

Some Good Things

• The few cherries I got off my trees were incredible.
• This is the tiniest, most perfect baby basil ever.  I <3 it.

• Some of my tomatoes actually ripened, in spite of the fact that I planted late and neglected to help them along as the weather got colder.
• My cherry tomatoes tasted like candy and the larger heirlooms were just… wow.  There really is nothing like a homegrown tomato.
• Figs.  But my beloved fig tree is getting its own post.

Most importantly, gardening is no longer new.  I have -let’s face it – everything still to learn, but the “I’ve never done this” barrier has been broken.  I planted things.  They grew.  I ate them.  They were amazing.

And if I can do it, anyone can.

How did your gardening (or houseplant growing ) ventures go this year?

Related posts:

1. Garden Update
2. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 1
3. Seed Saving, Garden Planning and Stupid Questions

It’s been rain-central in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s hard to remember that it’s already June!  While they’re a bit delayed, my plants definitely seem to realize that it’s supposed to be summer.  They are growing like crazy.

My strawberries are oh so tall.

The rhubarb has recovered well from its cross-country flight, although it appears something is munching on the leaves.

Raspberry starts from my lovely friend have decided that living with me is not so bad.

And fruit trees…

Fruit trees still feel like cheating to me.  They are so totally free food.  (Are these plums?  Anyone know?)

And last for today, but certainly not least, the potato condo.

What’s growing in your backyard?

Related posts:

1. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 1
2. Seed Saving, Garden Planning and Stupid Questions
3. House, Now With Fruit Trees!

Last week, I built a potato condo.  (Superman helped.  He supervised.  Har har.)

What Is A Potato Condo?

A potato condo (sometimes called a potato box or a build-as-you-go box) is basically what it sounds like – a tall, vertical home for your potatoes.  Instead of growing your potatoes in rows along the ground, you grow them UP, and harvest them vertically as well.  If that sounds a little weird, it will make more sense once I show you how to build it.

As far as I know, this ingenious contraption was spread across the internet by the Shibaguyz.  I discovered the Shibaguyz while I was living in DC, and was so excited when I moved to Olympia and they were *gasp* in Seattle!  That meant I got to be a fangirl in person at the West Seattle Edible Garden fair, where they gave a panel on container and small space gardening.  They are experts at growing an incredible amount of food in a very small space.  The potato condo is only the beginning.

We’re not small space or rental gardeners any more, but I still wanted a potato condo.  So when my wonderful neighbors gifted me with some seed potatoes ready to go, I knew it was time.

What You Need

First of all, salvaged wood.  Salvaged from a friend’s garage.  She was super-awesome and did ALL the cutting for me!

2x2s – Four of them, tallish (the eventual height of your condo)
2x4s – A bunch, depending on the dimensions of the condo you intend to build.  However, you won’t need them all at once, so you can get more as your potatoes (and their condo) grow.
Screws – long enough to go through your 2x4s
Some sort of screwing device.  Me = electric drill = love.

Since my wood was leftover, my 2x2s are just the length they are.  They’re about 3’ tall, and I may need to rig something sneaky if my potatoes get substantially taller than that.  My 2x4s are 30 inchers and a set of 27 inchers, half each.  You can build a different size condo, and I’ve seen several sets of dimensions floating around on the internet.  Whatever size you choose, you have to be sure you have room for your long boards to overlap your short boards on the corners – 3” total.  So you could also do 33s and 30s, 36s and 33s, etc.

Second, a spot – make sure that whatever spot you choose will have enough sun.  For me, because I live in a jungle, choosing a spot also involved mowing.  I probably should have flipped the grass where I put the condo, but I didn’t.  Because I’m a rebel *cough lazy cough* like that.

Third, seed potatoes ready to plant.  Don’t forget the potatoes!

What Next?

Next, you build.  And if you’re like me, you do it without any kind of foresight or planning.  And then you have to take it apart and do it the right way.  So don’t be like me.

First, attach one of your SHORT 2x4s board to two of your 2x2s, one at each end.  (This pic is me doing it WRONG.  Don’t be like me.  Use a short board.)

Once you’ve done that with two short boards and each of your 2x2s, attach the two Stonehenge-shaped pieces with two of your longer boards to make a box.

Half the box, and…

Whole box!

As you can see, I added soil.  And then I added potatoes.

Please don’t use my potato spacing as an example.  Unless it’s right, in which case go ahead. No guarantees though.

Then cover up those potatoes.  Voila!

The Fun Part

So what on earth do you do with that whole pile of 2x4s?  Here comes the fun part – putting the “condo” in potato condo.  Soon your potatoes will sprout and start to grow.  As they grow, you add boards and additional soil one level at a time.  Let your vines get about 12” long before you bury them, and only cover 1/3 of the vine.

When it’s time to harvest, remove one of your bottom boards and start snagging your oldest potatoes from the bottom level.  Gradually work your way up the condo until you’ve harvested all your potatoes!

I’m really excited to see how the potato condo works out.  Rumor has it that it increases yields substantially over standard planting methods.  I have no perspective on that, but I’ll keep you guys posted.  Maybe those of you who actually know about these things will let me know how my potato condo measures up!

Related posts:

1. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 1
2. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 2

I’ve been absent, I know.  I promise it’s for a good reason.  If you follow me on Twitter (or know me in real life), you already know what my good reason is.

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.

No related posts.

This weekend, a friend and I went to a garden planning and seed saving class hosted jointly by the Olympia Food Co-op and GRuB. I didn’t know about GRuB before this weekend, but I think I’m in love.  If you live in the Olympia area, I highly encourage you to check out their website and the great things they’re doing in the community.  These are great people doing amazing work in urban gardening, community resilience, and youth education.  If you’re somewhere else, you might see if there’s a group doing similar work in your area.

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.

Related posts:

1. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 1
2. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 2

No related posts.

Welcome to Part 2 of building a lasagna garden – this is the fun part!  (In case you missed Part 1, I talked about everything you will need and how I got it all for free.  Go check it out.)

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

Related posts:

1. How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 1

I’ve written before about the awesomeness that is Hyperlocavore, a yardsharing network that is empowering individuals and communities around the world.  (Also, the Hyperlocavore book club is really, really good.)

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?

Related posts:

1. Hyperlocavore Book Club: The Transition Town Handbook
2. Are You A Hyperlocavore?

I very much want to eat food I grow myself.  In addition to the huge list of good reasons to grow your own food (community resilience, carbon footprint, cost, health, flavor), I also find it magical that food will grow from the ground.  From a seed.  From dirt and sun and water and time.  That is just so cool to me.  Which is how I once again found myself standing and surveying my yard thinking, “How am I going to turn this mess into a garden that actually produces something I’d be willing to eat?”  (Other than dandelions.  I’m not going to eat them people, I’m just not.  I tried.  I didn’t like them.  I’m sorry, but I am just not that green.)

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

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Sometimes you find cool things in the most unexpected places.

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!

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Last Saturday, I headed over to the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair to see the sights and learn some stuff. There were booths, food, and even goats! And, of course, tons of plants. If I had been more prepared, I would have brought some home with me. Probably way too many, so maybe it was a good thing that I had nowhere to put them. And that my boyfriend went along for the ride to be a force of reason in the face of my over-enthusiasm.

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.

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