Lasagna Garden
- Thread starter horsefeed
- Start date
skyhightree1
Well-known member
I never even heard of that till saw your post and looked it up.
Suzie Q
Well-known member
In America it is called Lasagne Gardening. In Australia it is called No Dig Gardening.
I have been doing it for a while. No you don't shift the layers. You don't detract from the garden. All you ever do is add and you don't start too big as you will find you won't be able to feed it.
The difference between America and Australia is the weather. We do not get snow. In the Lasagne Gardening Book I read it said that she put one on a bitumen car park (you can put them anywhere in post or whatever) and after 2 years she sold the property. The didn't want the garden so she took it back and she could still read the newspaper on the first layer. Not here nope. 6 months and virtually everything like that you put down is gone. Egg cartons, junk mail, newspapers, everything. Gone and you would never know that it was there.
Hang on and I will go and see if I can copy and paste a thread I did on lasagne gardening.
I have been doing it for a while. No you don't shift the layers. You don't detract from the garden. All you ever do is add and you don't start too big as you will find you won't be able to feed it.
The difference between America and Australia is the weather. We do not get snow. In the Lasagne Gardening Book I read it said that she put one on a bitumen car park (you can put them anywhere in post or whatever) and after 2 years she sold the property. The didn't want the garden so she took it back and she could still read the newspaper on the first layer. Not here nope. 6 months and virtually everything like that you put down is gone. Egg cartons, junk mail, newspapers, everything. Gone and you would never know that it was there.
Hang on and I will go and see if I can copy and paste a thread I did on lasagne gardening.
Suzie Q
Well-known member
I found a post from me. In a thread where someone asked what I would do if I had hay not fit to feed to their cattle.
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=75204&start=15&hilit=lasagne
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=75204&start=15&hilit=lasagne
skyhightree1
Well-known member
Suzie Q":1rz1a4tu said:
Thats crazy seems more of a city persons garden. My garden I plant is almost 2 acres I would need everyone i know to come dump their stuff there so I could have one... Call me old school I will stick to regular soil gardens lasagna gardening is just weird to me.
Suzie Q
Well-known member
Skyhightree1 I have 100 acres. I am in a rural area not in the city.
When we first moved here my mum and I tried to dig a garden, in the garden that had been a garden before out the front. We took all day putting down water, trying to soften the ground and using a crow bar, in a whole day the 2 of us got down about 2 foot. We then filled the hole with all types of stuff from around the farm, chook manure, cow manure, horse manure, old hay, etc and then covered it over with dirt. That worked well, but was so much work and with Mum no longer here I didn't have the motivation to try and dig the other half of the garden or anywhere else.
The lasagne garden is done on layers on top of the soil. I can use stuff from around the farm. Chook manure, old hay, silage not used, junk mail, egg cartons, you name it. I also have a worm farm and use the worm castings and worm juice to water the garden.
i have been able to grow flowers, fruit, vegetables, bulbs, herbs, anything I want, with a wheelbarrow a shovel and a rake.
With this method I also have taught my old friends the same thing. My mother who is 83 years old. My best friend who is over 75 years old. Which is why I said in that thread that you do not have to do it all on one day like I do. You can do it over weeks or months. Or in hours - it it us to you as to how strong and physically fit you are. It is up to you as to how high you put the gardens so you don't have to bend to tend to the garden with your back. If there are weeds they are very easy to pull out and don't require physical strength.
Gardeners who are guys and are physically fit also love this type of gardening except they refer to it as Lazy Gardening.
We do not use Lasagne Gardening on our crops. We use the traditional ploughs etc down there. It is only up in the house yard that I use the No dig Gardening Technique and just treat each garden as an experiment.
My latest garden is a water garden. I have never had one before and now I have gold fish to feed as well.
With this lasagne method I have been able to do as many gardens as i want and wherever I want. I have started gardens at my Mum's property in Rochedale and when she recently moved into an over 50's resort with a big backyard she was disheartened with the large backyard with just rock pebbles put down. I shovelled the pebbles to the side and cut through the weed mat. I brought with me newspaper, hay bales and cow manure. She brought horse manure from her other property. There was a dumpster not far from her house where people had thrown out cuttings from the garden. So as I moved the pebbles and cut through the weed mat, mum was bringing in the cuttings from the dumpster. I just cut a hole and put down the layers that we had. I then planted some plants that I had brought with me. Out of the dumpster mum also retrieved very good top soil, so we put that in a hole to plant the plants and she also saved lines of grass so she has some grass a well. I planted a fancy lettuce that you just trim with scissors for your salads. A strawberry and some pretty flowers as well. I also planted a fruit salad tree that has 7 different fruits on it and out of the dumpster she saved a large red plant and we planted that as well.
The difference in mum was immediate, she was shown that it was something that she could do, that it was immediate and that she didn't have to have an empty yard without anything in it. After that I brought in a round plastic tub and a solar water fountain, and I ordered an elephant frame from Tasmania which I planted with a topiary plant underneath it and covered the elephant in a hundred solar lights.
Recently she commented on how much lettuce she has cut from that one plant and could not believe it was more than enough for one person. This was a lettuce that had self seeded in my garden after I planted them one year.
All of this with a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a knife to cut the weed mat. Mum has continued and has a great garden out the back now. You might just like it, and the very first layer, the newspaper causes the grass etc under it to die. This becomes a haven for earth worms and actually improves the soil underneath the garden. Eventually the roots do go down into the earth, the garden goes down to ground level, you just didn't do any digging in the start and you can then put newspaper around the plants and build again. Which is not as easy as the clean start but worth it.
..... and all the above was done by me - who was not a gardener. I just read an American book called Lasagne Gardening and gave it a go.
I now work 45 hours a week and run a 100 acre beef and lucerne farm on top of that. The one thing I can do when I get home is water the garden for a couple of minutes and not much more. It is the only thing I seem to have kept up with with starting work. I certainly haven't kept up with housework! :deadhorse:
When we first moved here my mum and I tried to dig a garden, in the garden that had been a garden before out the front. We took all day putting down water, trying to soften the ground and using a crow bar, in a whole day the 2 of us got down about 2 foot. We then filled the hole with all types of stuff from around the farm, chook manure, cow manure, horse manure, old hay, etc and then covered it over with dirt. That worked well, but was so much work and with Mum no longer here I didn't have the motivation to try and dig the other half of the garden or anywhere else.
The lasagne garden is done on layers on top of the soil. I can use stuff from around the farm. Chook manure, old hay, silage not used, junk mail, egg cartons, you name it. I also have a worm farm and use the worm castings and worm juice to water the garden.
i have been able to grow flowers, fruit, vegetables, bulbs, herbs, anything I want, with a wheelbarrow a shovel and a rake.
With this method I also have taught my old friends the same thing. My mother who is 83 years old. My best friend who is over 75 years old. Which is why I said in that thread that you do not have to do it all on one day like I do. You can do it over weeks or months. Or in hours - it it us to you as to how strong and physically fit you are. It is up to you as to how high you put the gardens so you don't have to bend to tend to the garden with your back. If there are weeds they are very easy to pull out and don't require physical strength.
Gardeners who are guys and are physically fit also love this type of gardening except they refer to it as Lazy Gardening.
We do not use Lasagne Gardening on our crops. We use the traditional ploughs etc down there. It is only up in the house yard that I use the No dig Gardening Technique and just treat each garden as an experiment.
My latest garden is a water garden. I have never had one before and now I have gold fish to feed as well.
With this lasagne method I have been able to do as many gardens as i want and wherever I want. I have started gardens at my Mum's property in Rochedale and when she recently moved into an over 50's resort with a big backyard she was disheartened with the large backyard with just rock pebbles put down. I shovelled the pebbles to the side and cut through the weed mat. I brought with me newspaper, hay bales and cow manure. She brought horse manure from her other property. There was a dumpster not far from her house where people had thrown out cuttings from the garden. So as I moved the pebbles and cut through the weed mat, mum was bringing in the cuttings from the dumpster. I just cut a hole and put down the layers that we had. I then planted some plants that I had brought with me. Out of the dumpster mum also retrieved very good top soil, so we put that in a hole to plant the plants and she also saved lines of grass so she has some grass a well. I planted a fancy lettuce that you just trim with scissors for your salads. A strawberry and some pretty flowers as well. I also planted a fruit salad tree that has 7 different fruits on it and out of the dumpster she saved a large red plant and we planted that as well.
The difference in mum was immediate, she was shown that it was something that she could do, that it was immediate and that she didn't have to have an empty yard without anything in it. After that I brought in a round plastic tub and a solar water fountain, and I ordered an elephant frame from Tasmania which I planted with a topiary plant underneath it and covered the elephant in a hundred solar lights.
Recently she commented on how much lettuce she has cut from that one plant and could not believe it was more than enough for one person. This was a lettuce that had self seeded in my garden after I planted them one year.
All of this with a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a knife to cut the weed mat. Mum has continued and has a great garden out the back now. You might just like it, and the very first layer, the newspaper causes the grass etc under it to die. This becomes a haven for earth worms and actually improves the soil underneath the garden. Eventually the roots do go down into the earth, the garden goes down to ground level, you just didn't do any digging in the start and you can then put newspaper around the plants and build again. Which is not as easy as the clean start but worth it.
..... and all the above was done by me - who was not a gardener. I just read an American book called Lasagne Gardening and gave it a go.
I now work 45 hours a week and run a 100 acre beef and lucerne farm on top of that. The one thing I can do when I get home is water the garden for a couple of minutes and not much more. It is the only thing I seem to have kept up with with starting work. I certainly haven't kept up with housework! :deadhorse:
chippie
Well-known member
this is very cool. Thank you for starting the thread. It sounds ideal for someone who does not have the equipment or hours to maintain a large garden. Grow enough to eat and can a bit for the future.
Jogeephus
Well-known member
It is very interesting. We have what we call a "kitchen garden" that is in the backyard. Its pretty small and we grow fresh stuff for the kitchen in it. I use a lot of the Square Foot Garden principles in this garden and its totally manual. This idea would work well with this garden I think.
skyhightree1
Well-known member
suzie q thanks for your post makes sense to me.
Suzie Q
Well-known member
You are most welcome and I can add more pics from my garden to inspire you.
Spider Lily
Varigated impatience
Silverbeet
Ladybird on a Chrysanthemum
Melbourne Cup Day (The Horse Race that stops a Nation)
My hat right side
and left side
and the table wreath I made for Christmas last year.
Spider Lily
Varigated impatience
Silverbeet
Ladybird on a Chrysanthemum
Melbourne Cup Day (The Horse Race that stops a Nation)
My hat right side
and left side
and the table wreath I made for Christmas last year.
Suzie Q
Well-known member
I will also add that the first garden that we dug did not last long. 6 foot grass!! The only thing that I have found to stop the grass is unopened newspapers as thick as I can put down and even that does not last a year. Cardboard boxes the grass came through it in no time.
The weed mat at mum's was put down over bulldozed ground as hard as a rock and there was grass starting to come through that which just might mean they used cheap weed mat.
The weed mat at mum's was put down over bulldozed ground as hard as a rock and there was grass starting to come through that which just might mean they used cheap weed mat.
skyhightree1
Well-known member
looks great..
chippie
Well-known member
beautiful flowers Suzie Q.
