How To Build A Lasagna Garden For Free – Part 2

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