Results from lasagna gardening

Here are the beds as we left them for the winter. It does not show in this photo, but each was piled approximately 6" high with aged cow manure from a local farm and chipped leaves. We spent many hours on many weekends working on converting this area from grass to garden and though the goal was to get every bed 2 feet high, we had to settle for this. I figured it would be a good experiment since according to all of the forums I've read, there is no way to go wrong with lasagna gardening.


Here are the beds after we started working them in the spring. As you can tell, some of the beds are littered with weeds. It seems a little random, some of the beds looked good and others were a mess. Anyway, at first I thought that there must have been weed seeds in the cow manure or the leaves, but when I started to work on getting the beds weed-free again, I am pretty sure most of them came from below the newspaper. Additionally, in some place I can tell we didn't do a good enough job making sure the newspaper and cardboard was overlapping - a line of grass would be poking through.

My understanding was that below the newspaper, the earthworms would eat the dying sod and aerate the soil, making the beds soft and easy to work for several inches below the newspaper. That did not happen at all. As you can see from the second photo, we ended up buying a small electric tiller to make the ground plantable. We did our best to keep the earthworms safe but I know we had some casualties.

A week after the first tilling when the ground warmed enough to do some seed planting, there was a plethora of earthworms. Either we did a sufficient job protecting them (I would follow my spouse and grab all of the wriggly earthworms I saw, placing them in a bed that he had already tilled) or tilling doesn't do damage to the soil the way I was warned.


We ended up taking all of the leaves-and-manure mixture and piling it on two beds (see photo above). Not only were they the smallest beds, but they were the beds for carrots, onions, and spinach, three crops that are especially grateful for raised beds prepared lasagna gardening style.

All-in-all, I was disappointed with the results. It seemed to take an enormous amount of effort collecting and spreading the materials, especially trying to keep costs down. Even in hindsight I can't believe how much time and energy it took. Plus, the results were far below my expectations. (Especially now, as the carrots and onions are barely growing - more on that later.)

I don't think I would try it again or recommend it. If I did, I would just choose a couple of beds (so that material gathering was more manageable) and try to do them perfectly - thicker pads of newspaper (4-5 sheets), substantial overlapping, materials piled two feet high. I estimate that this spring, we've spent a comparable amount of time and energy preparing these beds as I did in my previous garden (which I hadn't touched prior to that spring). Considering how much effort we had already put into this garden, this was a fail.

A Garden in Pictures, 11/6/10

I'm out of town this weekend for a yoga conference so I won't be doing any work on the garden, but here are the pictures after our progress last weekend.

The fence is built and includes a wonderful gate.

The bean beds are ready (the back row); they include about 1" of compost followed by 4" of chipped leaves, and are covered by tarps.

The strawberry and broccoli bed is ready (front row on the right); it includes about 4" of chipped leaves followed by a smattering of compost on the line where planting will happen, then covered by tarps.

Cardboard boxes are down over many of the walking paths. Most of the paths are 2' wide, but the main path is 3' wide. We plan to put bark or hay down on top of the walking paths, but it is a low priority.

Next weekend we should be finishing up the front row (watermelons, celery, and asparagus) and the second row (carrots, onions, and spinach). Those rows will be planted earliest in the spring. Then at our next available weekend, whether that is in the middle of winter or not until spring planting time, we will finish the 3rd and 4th beds - which will house potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and squash.

manure, part 33 1/3

We went to buy 50 bags of cow manure Saturday. When we pulled the truck around to load them up, I noticed the bags said "compost and manure." Looking more closely, it turns out the bags were about 10% cow manure and 90% other materials - mushroom compost, etc. Not what I wanted! I was totally at a loss for what to do. I mean, maybe this stuff would be better - or maybe worse. Do we still mix it with leaves? I just had no idea. We decided to halve our order (because that was all we could take anyway...they were supposed to weigh 25 lbs each but they actually weighed 40 lbs each...) and see what happened.

We prepared one bed - the green beans, which will be two rows of 35 ft each. I layered the newspaper down and even though I would not call the day 'windy,' I ended up having to quickly figure out a way to keep the paper down and just started throwing shovelfuls of the compost on each sheet. I layered the newspapers so that their are 3-4 sheets in each spot, overlapping to make it seamless. Then I gave the newspapers a good soaking, and by then it was sun down so we had to call it a night.

The next day I figured I would go ahead and make a solid layer of compost, so I began putting more down. One problem was that in between the piles of compost holding the paper down, air pockets seemed to form that the compost would actually slide off. It was difficult to spread the compost without tearing the newspaper - that might be one reason to have layers thicker than 1". We then put about 4" of chipped leaves on top, covered with tarps held down by rocks, and we'll wait and see how it goes...

We had enough time to get one more bed started, and my spouse and I were able to work on this one together because he had finished the fence by this point. It was SO much easier with two people! I would lay out the newspaper and he would spray it down - it kept it from blowing away, and I bet the newspaper got more thoroughly soaked. On this bed we piled chipped leaves next (just to experiment) and finished with two small rows of compost, right where the broccoli and strawberries will be planted. Just because we're running out, and well, we'll just see what happens.

Friday night I read online forums about lasagna gardening, and I discovered that although every person seemed to go about it their own way and have their own method, I did not find one person who said it didn't work. So I'm going to try a pretty bare bones approach and see what happens.

We still have not figured out how to get cow manure from our farmer. We did find a little trailer/cart that can haul more than a truck from our local rental place, but it's expensive ($66 for four hours, $88 for a full day) and we do not have access to a truck with a hitch. We chatted with him a little bit at the market and he seemed confident that we could come to a price agreement we'd both be happy with. If we have to rent a truck on top of the trailer AND pay for manure, I don't know...what matters to us is our total cost, not just the price of manure. I have no doubts he'll be fair about that. I do think we'll just get enough for 1" instead of doing the whole 18-24 inches. That would actually mean that we would only have to get about 30 more feet! We can get that in our neighbors truck, shouldn't be a problem. We would have enough to maybe even do the full recommended height for the smallest bed, for comparison. If we pull the tarps off the beds in the spring and find that it's not what we were hoping for, we can always do the recommended layering then and plant directly in it.

A Garden in Pictures, 10/30/10

Finally, we made some progress on the fence and I got some pictures taken! Also, I found an answer to one of my tomato problems! We had a fantastic time at the farmer's market today. I'm sad that it was the last one, but most of the farmers were in a good mood because they're looking forward to sleeping in next Saturday:) Which is to say we had lots of good conversation.

First, the garden. Right now we just have the posts for the fence in...my spouse took off work yesterday to dig the holes and install the posts. He rented a post-hole digger for $12 and we bought some concrete for $16. I wasn't sure about the concrete but he said it was necessary, particularly in the Illinois winters - the ground freezing and thawing tends to push things out of the ground, like our chain link fence. He said it we need to take down the fence, the concrete will come out with the fence posts without too much trouble. I can't remember how much the wood cost right now but I'll see if I can find out. The first photo is the view from the second-story window, the picture on the right is on the ground, looking northeast.



The farmer's market always has a master gardener booth, and I brought this tomato to show them. This is what happened to all of my tomatoes...they looked great when they were green, and as soon as they started to ripen they split and got this cottony/spider-weby looking stuff in the cracks. The master gardeners weren't sure, but they gave me lots of resources. I'm excited to check them out, I'm sure I will make good use of their knowledge next year! I asked my farmer and he said that several of his tomatoes had that happen - it has to do the weather this year, where we had several downpours followed by extreme heat. The tomatoes had too much water and then when exposed to the sun, they grew too quickly. Their outside tomatoes had the same thing happen, but the tomatoes that they had in the hoophouse, where they can control the conditions more easily and the plants are protected a little better, did not have this. I talked to another farmer who lives a little bit further away, who did not have the same problems with his tomatoes this year, and he agreed with our farmer's diagnosis - I think he'd seen it before in previous seasons, but his location was drier so he escaped with many delicious amazing tomatoes this year.

In other news, here is what happens to tomato plants after the first frost.

I was amazed at how different the plant looked! It is totally wilted and shriveled up, and it looked great the night before the frost. I'm going to cut open one of the tomatoes to see how the fruit was affected by the frost. We have several green tomatoes that we were planning to batter and fry, but if the insides of the fruit look anything like the plant I don't think we'll want to use them.

manure cont.

Okay, I picked up Patricia Lanza's 'Lasanga Gardening' book and it answered some questions for me. First, you can put 'raw' compost materials in your lasagna garden - vegetable scraps, etc, basically anything you'd put into a compost bin. If you are putting ready compost on, you can actually plant immediately - so if you already had an area where you had gardened before or you didn't have to worry about killing the soil, AND you had goliath-sized compost bins that would be full of ready compost in the spring, you could just wait until spring to do this. Second, you do want to put down black plastic if you are 'cooking' it over the winter. Cooking it heats it up so that compost happens quicker - in her experience, in six weeks. We will put the plastic down just to be sure - checking it once a week and removing it when it is ready. I don't know what happens to overcooked lasagna gardens!

There are still two things I am confused about: first, she says that you should let it 'cook' for six weeks. But I am wanting to prepare it now to plant in six months. I'm not sure if it's okay to go ahead and do it now, or if I should wait until mid-February to layer the materials. Second, she says (and everything else I've seen) to layer until materials reach 18-24 inches. This seems especially important for sheet composting, because that will ensure that the pile gets heated to the point that compost happens and kills bacteria and disease. Now that I think about it, that's not confusing, it's just not what I was hoping to hear. Purchasing manure is crazy expensive for the size garden we're planning. I was hoping we could do a short stacked lasagna garden.

She recommends layers of about 4", but also says that she uses four times as much leaves/brown material as green material. This is consistent with what I have heard about ideal practices for composting, but then you would only have one layer of green material, such as manure. Would it go on the top, the bottom, or somewhere in the middle? To make it easier on us, I'm wondering about doing the layers much smaller - because 50 cubic feet, enough to cover the entire garden to a depth of 1", is all we can get in the truck.

So I think we're going to do a little experiment - we'll do some of the beds with 4" layers, and others with smallers layers. I was feeling anxious because I thought this had to be done in the fall, but it turns out we can take it easy as long as we use the black plastic. Plus, we could prepare the beds dedicated to early crops now, and prepare the beds that are planned for vegetables that don't get planted until later in a month or so. That will give us time to collect manure for free in a few weeks when we have more energy. Easier on the pocketbook too! This is supposed to be cheaper than buying vegetables at the store all winter long - I was expecting some upfront costs this first year, but not what I was estimating earlier this week. Ahhh! I feel so relieved to finally have this figured out!

searching for good manure

We went to order 350 cubic feet of cow manure on Saturday. I wondered to the saleswoman whether the manure came from pasture-raised cows or feedlot cows, and she figured (as I did) that it was from feedlot cattle. Properly aged and composted manure should not harbor any of the bacteria that are common in feedlot cattle - but I wasn't sure if the antibiotics feedlot cattle are pumped full of would remain in their composted manure. So we decided to wait to place our order until we did some more research.

Sure enough, I found an article showing that antibiotics have been found in vegetables, after using feedlot manure as fertilizer. They report that antibiotics have also been found in organic vegetables. So I began searching the internet for an alternative. Currently I can't find any commercially available manure from pasture-raised cows that is distributed where I live, but we have a friend with a horse stable who told us we could have whatever manure we are able to shovel off the barn floor for free. A good option, but frankly we are under some time constraints right now so I kept looking. Our farmer offered to sell us some of their cow manure, and is even willing to use a bucket loader to help us. He has left it up to us to suggest a fair price. Assuming he accepts what we offer, this option will probably win - except we do not have a vehicle to transport it home in. Our neighbors let us borrow their truck, but we would probably have to take four loads to get the bare minimum that we need - and we don't want to abuse their goodwill.

I've looked into renting a horse trailer or something, but as far as I can tell that's not a feasible option. Perhaps we will offer to do something very, very nice for our neighbors. At this point though, it still looks like we might have to buy the feedlot manure:( We need more organic cows!

A Garden in Pictures, 10/23/10

Today we are building a fence for the garden. We still need to get the area prepared, however we do it...after more research on lasagna gardening, I feel confused about whether or not I am supposed to put actual compost on top of the cardboard, or just organic materials that will turn into compost over the winter. I thought it was the latter, but from what I understand about compost, it wouldn't get hot enough over the winter to turn into healthy compost.

Then there is the problem of finding cow manure. I would like to buy it from a farmer nearby that lets his/her cattle graze on grass rather than feeding them corn. Cows' stomachs are not meant to eat corn, so the manure from cows with corn-based diets will not be very good.

Besides that, there are other methods of preparing soil in the fall that make it easier in the spring. So many options! This is what can be frustrating and overwhelming about gardening, for someone like me who has no clue what they are doing. Most gardening resources are really intended for people who already have a fairly decent working knowledge of how to grow stuff. But I know that probably, all methods will work just fine, so I need to just pick the one that makes the most sense to me. My goal is to have the grass die over the winter rather than having to remove the sod in the spring. I don't mind tilling the soil in the spring, and it seems odd to me that I wouldn't have to do that if I did lasagna gardening. To let you in on a secret, I was planning on tilling in the spring anyway, even if I did lasagna gardening. The scandal! So, I'm leaning towards trying something else. I just have to keep researching the options in the meantime...and quick!

Lasanga Garden Prep

Lasagna gardening, for those who might not know, is an easy way of preparing soil for planting.

1. Begin by spreading a layer of either cardboard or newspaper over the area in which you will be gardening. I'm doing some of each - we have a fair amount of cardboard boxes left over from our recent move, but I've read that the cardboard doesn't decompose as thoroughly as newspaper. I'll let you know what I find come spring when I go digging in the dirt! I only used brown cardboard...I figured if it was clearly bleached and/or dyed, or wax-coated, it probably wouldn't decompose the way I wanted. I also removed all plastic tape - I didn't mind if it pulled off the outer layer of the cardboard because I figured it would just decompose that much more quickly!

2. Layer compost on top of the cardboard/newspaper until it reaches about 2 feet high. You'll alternate layers of brown compost with green compost. I'm new to composting so I'm still trying to figure out exactly how compost is categorized: Obviously dead leaves are brown and rotten produce is green, but what about new grass clippings? Coffee grounds? Manure? I will learn these things, I have no doubt, but until then I feel ignorant.

3. Reputedly, the 2 feet high compost pile will shrink over the winter (even quicker, in fact). My goal is to take photos and measurements once a week and report to the blog.

4. When it is time to plant, all you have to do is start digging. You don't have to aerate, hoe, weed, or anything. I'm cautiously hopeful...you know what they say about things that are too good to be true...and this definitely sounds very dream-like!

We have a dog who will get crazy excited when she smells manure covering the lawn, so we are waiting to pile the compost until we've built a simple fence that should keep her out of the garden area. Our yard is big enough that she will still have plenty of room to run around, but she won't get to eat or roll in cow poop so we'll stay happy too.

Photos coming over the weekend. I think that will be a good standard - photos on Saturday.

I love comments so let me know how you prepare your garden for the winter - what technique do you use? What have you heard about lasagna gardening? What vegetables do you been plan on growing? How long have you been gardening?

Beginning the 2011 season

It is clear from the slowly dwindling stock at the farmer's market that the growing season is winding down. This must mean it is time to start preparations for next year's garden.

We are converting a 50' x 40' section of lawn into a vegetable garden, using the lasagna method - layering cardboard, newspaper, and compost so that over the winter the grass will die and decompose, providing excellent nutrition for the soil. Last year my 4' x 10' plot took me two days to prepare in the spring - it didn't help that I was using hand tools and had no clue what I was doing:) I'm hoping this will be easier on my back and less time-consuming.

Our hope is that the garden will provide enough vegetables to feed us throughout the winter. Our summer diet will be providing by a local CSA. I am a novice gardener; in my small plot last year I grew spinach, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and broccoli. The spinach was the only delicious success; the peppers did not grow, the broccoli was not edible, and I (as an example of how much of a novice I am) did not stake up the tomatoes. After the first couple of delicious beauties, they all rotted on the ground before they were ripe enough to pick.

Because I have primarily relied on the internet for advice on gardening, I thought I should document the journey in hopes that whatever I learn might help someone else. I'll mostly focus on my experience in my garden, but will also share successful recipes and the occasional discussion of food politics in the U.S.