Lasagna Gardening - by Angie Fleshman

One of my dear Sisters in Christ has given me this article about a gardening project their church homeschool group did this spring!  I was very impressed with it, and thought I would share it with  you!  I took pictures of the garden..but can’t find them!  (Sorry, Angie, things got a bit hectic after that Saturday hehe)  ENJOY!!!

Lasagna Gardening

                Well the Lord has blessed us with another spring, and with spring comes gardening. If any of you are from the country, I am sure you hear the buzz of information that comes along with this time of year.  I was asked to share a little about some information that I have found myself about lasagna gardening. I hope you will enjoy and learn from it.

                Lasagna gardening is a quick, easy way to start a garden. It would be great for a home schooling project, for people with little space or tools, or it also works great for the older generation that loves to garden but may not be able to do all the labor of traditional gardening.

                I first learned about lasagna gardening by watching a video by the West Ladies called Homestead Blessings Gardening ( www.homestead-blessings.com).  I also found the book by Patricia Lanza Lasagna Gardening at the library. It goes through all the information you will need for this type of gardening. Ms. Lanza started the idea of lasagna gardening when her children left home and she had to do the gardening herself and found that it worked wonderfully. I would like to encourage you to check out this book if you are interested in serious gardening or if you are just starting, it has so many good points.

                The reason it is called lasagna gardening is because you layer the material to make a raised bed. You use any organic material that you can get like leaves, grass clippings, barn litter, compost, peat moss, straw…. just any organic mulch or things you would put in a compost pile (no meat scraps) . This is like making a big compost pile in layers and planting in it.  Your first layer would be cardboard or a double layer of wet newspapers to kill the grass and promote earthworms. Then just layer and put your plants in and you have an instant garden.  The book suggests to layer peat moss in every other layer but the video didn’t, they just used straw, manure, leaves, and compost. Be creative and look around for what you have or you can buy things at the store.

                We recently had a ladies gathering for our church where we made a lasagna garden to plant herbs. We used cardboard, composted dirt, leaves, old grass clippings, and peat moss. It came together fast and easy. We had a great time planting and discussing the herbs. The best thing is by adding mulch through the year we won’t have to worry about weeding the little 3×3 herb garden we constructed.

                I hope you try lasagna gardening for yourself and I pray that the Lord will bless you with a wonderful harvest.

Blessings,

Angie Fleshman

This entry was posted on June 1, 2010 at 12:48 and is filed under projects, curriculum, hints, homeschooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.