Lasagna Gardening

My last post was all about Biba's famous lasagna. Today I wanted to talk about lasagna gardening.

Maybe you have heard of lasagna gardening before. It's called that because it consists of creating layers of organic material. Last fall, we purchased three cedar wooden frames in order to create raised beds in our backyard. We don't have a space for a garden, per se, so we had to create one... where the lawn used to be.

How do you turn a patch of lawn into a gardening space? We chose to use lasagna gardening. We started by putting our wooden frames on the lawn, being careful not to put them on top of any sprinklers. Next, we put down a layer of wet newspaper over the grass. On top of the newspaper we piled compost, straw, coffee grounds, shredded leaves.... Lots of layers of organic matter, like a lasagna. The grass essentially composts itself, aided by worms who eat the organic matter and enrich the soil with their castings. Here were our beds when we started:

Then, we simply let our "lasagna" sit over the fall/winter season. The lack of rain caused the process to go a little slower decomposition than we'd expected, but sure enough, almost all the grass died off and we now have a nice, compact area in which to grow vegetables.

Here our beds were in early spring when we prepared the first bed to plant our early veggies (like lettuce and peas and carrots) by simply adding garden soil and a top dressing of compost, plus soaker hoses to water them:

And here is how it looks now, with all beds filled, including tomatoes, peppers and beans:

This weekend holds even more gardening when we head over to my parent's larger plot to plant the heat-loving kinds of things that need lots of room (melons, pumpkins, winter squash, etc.)