Garden Party - Our Lasagna Garden

So maybe you put off starting your garden a little too long this year.  Or maybe you've decided for other reasons that you need to start a garden next year.  Now is the perfect time to start, and I'll show you how...

Gardening for me became a passion after watching a few TV shows and reading a book.  The Square Foot Gardening method has truly changed my life.  And my kids' lives.  For the better.

Five years ago, during a really stressful time in our lives, I decided to burn off all that excess negative energy in a positive way by starting a garden.  Fortunately for us, my in-laws live next door to us, and allowed us to start small by using some of their existing garden space that they no longer were using.  It was almost a near perfect 4-foot square that is advocated in All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.  It came with fairly high sides (about 6").

I was determined to use Mel's Mix per the instructions in the book because it made so much sense.  You start with compost, aka recycled plants and plant materials.  Then you add peat moss and vermiculite.  Peat moss is a sterile amendment, meaning no weed seeds.  Because the particles are irregularly shaped, they create air pockets within the soil that help plants find root space, and also create spaces for water to get into the soil.  Peat moss itself also holds a LOT of water, so it helps distribute this moisture to the plants during the growing season.  Vermiculite is a rock product that also helps hold and redistribute water.

Basically, this is the soil-less mix that nurseries use.

So we bought a big bale of peat moss.  I spread it out on a big tarp in the backyard.  I hauled quite a few wheelbarrows full of compost.  I emptied in a bag of vermiculite.  I mixed and I stirred and I mixed some more.  Then I spread this brand new garden soil on top of our area in the garden, gave it a good water, and planted a few seeds.  We had a garden.

The following spring, I put in two of the beds we have now.  I dug up the sod, flipped it over, and topped it with more homemade Mel's Mix.  And this is where I decided never again.  To fill the amount of space we have, it was crazy expensive.  Even though the in-laws and our family are avid composters, there wasn't enough finished so we had to buy more.  And we had to buy more peat moss.  And more vermiculite.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  Plus, the mixing and spreading are pretty heavy work.  Think sore arms and legs for a few days type heavy work.  There had to be a better, cheaper way to do this.

Now you all know that my personal motto is "laziness is the mother of efficiency".  And while I LOVE working in my garden, I'd like to be able to do my normal work at normal speed with no pain after I'm out there doing my thing.  Remember that scene from Chariot's of Fire, where the guys are running in slow motion on the beach to that beautiful music?  Yeah, that's me after all that mixing and dumping.  I move in really slow motion - no special effects necessary.  Except no beautiful music - only "oohs"  and "aahs", and not in a good way either.

Enter the next gardening book that has changed my life:  Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza.  This book explains how to create your own fertile garden without all that back-breaking work.  This is the way soil is made in nature, and uses materials you have on hand.

This process is also called "composting in place" and "sheet composting".  After you read this post, do a Google search and see what you can find.  It's really fascinating.

So let me show you how we use it in our garden.  As I've shared before, we have 3 garden beds, each about 4 feet wide by about 16 feet long.  You can imagine how much Mel's Mix it took to fill these up about 6".  This year, we built the two original beds up to 2 feet high.  Because the beds were not well taken care of last summer (long story), they were full of weeds and grasses.  For the first time EVER, we borrowed the neighbor's rototiller and tilled the weeds into the soil.  We then filled each of the beds with a very healthy, organic soil mix that we purchased from a local garden supplier.  It was way easier and much cheaper than doing it the other way.  This summer, we have tried to grow our garden in this soil.  The nutrients that the plants have used to grow are pretty depleted.  Anything leftover that the soil micro-organisms haven't used up may have leached farther down into the bed due to the drought and the heavy watering I've had to do over the summer.  It's time to replenish the soil for next year.

First, I watered the soil, then I raked a thin layer of "bunny beans" over the top of it.  Bunny beans is a euphemism for the end product made by our pet rabbits.  Litter box leftovers.  You get the picture.  Our one bunny, who uses a litter box, uses a recycled newspaper product as his litter.  This product is totally biodegradable, and safe for the garden.  So is his manure.  He's a vegetarian.  By eating and digesting the greens I either buy or grow for him, he makes me fertilizer.  'Nuff said.  Our other bunny is disabled (another long story), and uses newspapers to do his business.  After I put Bunny #1's litter box contents on the soil, I covered them with Bunny #2's newspapers.  Then I gave the newspaper layer a good soak with the hose.

Worms and soil organisms love to eat newspaper, especially when it comes pre-fertilized.  This layer is about 1/2"-ish thick.  That's important to remember.  Newspaper also acts like a weed barrier.  That'll be helpful next season.

Then I raked some sawdust that was generously donated by a friend of mine who is a high school shop teacher.  Another layer, about 1/2" thick.  Be careful raking because your papers will tear.  Also, you'll notice some paper edges sticking up.  The important thing is that you have relatively even coverage for all your layers.  The Department of Weights and Measures won't be over to make sure that they are all the same depth.  When God tells the trees to shed their leaves in the fall, they don't always land in even layers either.  I think He knows what He's doing, so I'm cool with a few edges peaking out here and there.  Again, a really good soak with the hose.

And PS - if you are using sawdust in your layers that comes from pines (and mine does), be aware that as it decomposes, it will acidify your soil.  Same goes for pine needles.  This is why my layer is so thin, and so close to the existing soil.  With the layers that we build up on top of it, the roots of the plants that go in next season probably won't reach this layer.  You can also sprinkle on some lime.

Next, this is the pile of grasses and weeds I pulled from the walkways between the beds.

There are people who tell you that you shouldn't compost weeds.  I disagree.  LOUDLY!  Most of the "weeds" I pulled are grasses.  You can compost grass clippings.  In fact you should be composting grass clippings.  Also, those nasty weeds rarely get eaten by the bugs.  Whatever chemical compounds they possess that makes them taste horrible to creatures who want to eat my vegetables, I want that in my soil for other plants to use as well.  And speaking of what other plants use - weeds steal valuable nutrients from the soil.  By composting them, I'm taking the nutrients back.  So I spread the weeds and grasses over the top of the sawdust.

That big tall fluffy thing in the middle is a basil plant.  It is the only plant that thrived in this bed this summer.  The layer of weeds/grasses is about 6" deep.  And if you said "soak it really well with a hose next", you'd be correct!

Finally, I made a layer about 2" thick of homemade compost.  For the whole bed, it took about 6 wheelbarrows full of compost. The picture shows the first half done.  Again, soak with the hose.

By now you are probably wondering why the depth measurements are fairly important.  The best mixture for compost is 1 part greens to 2 parts browns.  Greens are things like grasses and weeds, and also your kitchen scraps, coffee grounds and filters and tea bags.  They break down pretty quickly, and are like a sugar rush for the soil organisms.  Browns are things like fallen leaves (which make up the majority of our compost), newspapers, sawdust, corrugated cardboard.  Basically, things that come from trees.  These provide long term energy to the organisms.  Think of it like orange juice and oatmeal for breakfast.  The juice gets your blood sugar up for some quick energy, and the oatmeal keeps you going through the day.  Because the greens decompose fairly quickly, they give off a LOT of heat.  By covering the grasses/weeds with the darker compost, I've not only added that extra layer of browns to the mix, I'm also retaining the heat to help "cook" any seeds.

If you look at the measurements I've given here, the numbers don't add up.  And no it's not "Ann Math" either. Here's why.  I have 2 feet of brown (aka soil) under my greens.  Also, greens decay fairly fast.  About the time I'll be needing more browns for energy for the decomposers, our trees will be shedding their leaves.

To keep our layers building and growing, the litter box will be emptied into the garden over the winter.  The newspapers from the rabbit cage are going to be composted with a new method of composting I learned about this summer - bokashi.  More about that later.  I'll also be adding worm castings from our worm bin.  In the late winter, I'll start my seeds indoors.  In the really early spring, I'll add another layer of compost (not nearly as thick), and plant cold-tolerant seeds right into the compost.  As the weather warms, I'll transplant my seedlings, and grow from there.  Weeds and spent plants will be pulled left right on top, composting in place, until the leaves fall again.

Thanks for letting me share my garden with you today!  I hope this inspires and encourages you to give it a try in your own existing garden, or to consider for next spring's garden.

Have a great day!

Garden Party - Companion Planting

Remember WAAAAAY back when, in the post about planning your garden?

I'm sure you'll remember the diagrams with the fun colored dots.  Well, this is what they look like in my garden...

And here's another one:

You'll notice I don't have any photos from the tomato/marigold/basil/pepper diagram. We have had such record heat here, coupled with amazing drought conditions that none of the seeds I planted for these plants grew. Not one. Not even the marigolds! I have even resorted to watering our beds with a lawn sprinkler. It's a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. The sprinkler can water for a half-hour while I do something else semi-productive in the air conditioning or take 4LPA for a walk. But still no plants...

The good news is that we have no Japanese beetles in the garden gnoshing on my potatoes or anything else. None. The geraniums are doing their job. Also, we have minimal cabbage leaf looper damage on the kale. Way to go, zinnias!

So, yes, companion planting really does work. It's a cheaper, prettier alternative to nasty chemical bug sprays.

Now if we could just get some rain...

Garden Party - Building your Raised Beds

So you've started your seeds, and double-dug your bed area.  Now what?

Now you build a raised bed.  I know it sounds really scary, but actually it's not.  There are lots of how-to's online, including this one.

So, here's my personal opinion on this matter.  You can build a basic raised bed garden, and fill it with amended soil, or Mel's Mix from All New Square Foot Gardening.  You will get vegetables to grow, and they will do pretty well.

But...

By double digging under the bed space, you create a pathway for worms to migrate.  These unsung heroes of the gardening world digest organic matter and give you worm castings (aka worm poop) which is AWESOME fertilizer.  The spaces they create within the soil as they move around also allows the passage of water and nutrients through the soil, which makes these more accessible to your plants.  Worms - they're not just the breakfast of champion birds!

By building a raised bed, you can also control the environment in which your plants grow.  This will allow you to get in the dirt sooner in the Spring, and play in the dirt later in the fall.  Raised beds provide better drainage if you have a "wet" year.  By filling the bed with amended soil or Mel's Mix, the soil in a raised bed generally retains moisture better in a "dry" year.  A raised bed makes it so you can add hoops, and cages, and trellises, and all easier than if you had a flat, on-the-ground bed.  And hey, it's easier on your back, too!

I'll get off my raised bed, I mean soap box, now.

To build our beds, we used leftover lumber from a neighbor.  It cost us nothing.  We also used posts and pipe from other friends.  Also $0.  If you need to purchase lumber, be sure it is exterior grade.  Also, be sure it is not treated.  This is especially true if you are upcycling scrap.  Pressure treated wood, until fairly recently, had been treated with all sorts of interesting things.  Like arsenic.  That's the last thing you want in your carrots!

So here's what makes our beds really unique.  As you can see from the photo above, our garden is on a slope.  Our house is built into a hill, and we have a goofy patch of yard that gets full sun.  The flat part of our yard doesn't.  So guess where the garden went?!  They are also about 4 feet wide and 16 feet long.  That's 4 SFG beds side-by-side.  And we have 3 of them.  If you are doing the math, that's 192 square feet of garden.  If you were to plant that all in beets, think how many beets that could be using SFG!

If you have level ground, the raised bed is a piece of cake.  Really simple construction.  But, I want to share with you about how to compensate for the slope.  And this is a "do as I say, not as I did" life lesson type moment.

Here's why - and honest, I held the camera perfectly straight up and down.  To account for the weight of the soil as gravity pulls it down hill, our beds should be wider at the bottom.  We're fixing that issue over the summer as we can.  You can also see in this photo how we started our framing.  Just 2 x 4's, staked into the ground every few feet.  Then, flat boards were nailed to the stakes, with metal stakes on the outside for reinforcement.

This year, we are leveling out one bed with the curvy steps, and the center bed is being raised to a full 2 feet in height.  We had all the beds tilled this year (I don't normally like to do that, and I'll explain why another time).  Here you can see what they look like now.

On top of this tilled soil, I will generously sprinkle "bunny beans" (aka litter box leftovers from our pet rabbits), along with the newspaper from one of the rabbits' cages.  The newspapers will help suppress any weeds that got tilled in (and trust me, there were plenty), as well as serve as food for my worms.  The new composted mix (which comes this week) will be dumped and spread on top.

Once that's done, I'll top the new compost with more newspapers and a thick layer of straw mulch.  I'll poke holes through the straw and newspapers to transplant seedlings.

The bed you see on the left will be mostly potatoes, and geraniums as soon as it's safe for them.  The bed on the right will be in Princess' hands this year to grow her prize-winning flowers.

So that's what's next for now - stay tuned for transplanting and direct seeding!

Garden Party - Planning Where It All Will Go

Green gardening for St. Pat's Day!

So how does it all fit together?


I made some pretty diagrams for you today.  We're going to combine what we've learned in Square Foot Gardening and the Louise Riotte books.

Let's say, for sake of example, that you've made a true Square Foot Garden, which is 4 feet x 4 feet.  You've built the boxes, and even gone so far as to fill them.  Here's how you can combine the two principles, easily I might add.

Here's example one - a tomato bed.  Everyone loves to grow tomatoes.  They are easy to grow.  Everyone eats them, and when grown in your own backyard their flavor is so superior to what you'd buy in a store.  By the way, if you've never gardened before, this is a bed I would HIGHLY recommend starting with.  These are all plants that are pretty easy to grow.

This looks almost like a pizza, doesn't it?!  Allow me to explain what you see, and put things in perspective for you.  The big brown box is your Square Foot Garden.  The smaller squares within it are 2-foot sections, roughly halves.  Tomatoes need a lot of space and sun, and they are the big red circles.  Cage them.  You'll thank me.  SFG recommends trellising them.  Cages are easier and cheaper.  Cage your tomatoes the day you transplant them (these plants all prefer transplanting over direct seeding).  Put a tablespoon of epsom salts in the bottom of the planting hole because tomatoes love the extra magnesium.  Then, we have the dark green circles.  These are peppers.  Stick to either sweet or spicy - don't do both.  They will cross-pollinate each other and you will have all spicy.  Our pretty polka-dot border is where we are getting some natural pest protection.  The gold circles are marigolds, which keep pretty much anything out of the garden (there are a few exceptions, but VERY few).  To add interest, and to maximize our space, the bright green circles are basil.  You can also do parsley instead, or do both.  Think of how beautiful this will look mid-July!

So here's another one.  These are brassicas - the cabbage family.  You'll notice that it looks pretty similar.

The large, dark green circles are head cabbages.  The smaller green circles are collard greens (which are so healthy for you and easy to grow).  Our pretty polka-dot border is alternating onions and zinnias.  The zinnias keep out cabbage worms.  I watched this happen first hand at the community garden.  The beds that had zinnias in or near them had practically no worms.  No zinnias - stalks.  Like almost to the ground stubs.  Really.

So here's what we do with our beds when they are potato beds for a season.  Remember our beds are 4 feet x 16 feet.

The brown ovals are the potatoes.  The pink dots are geraniums.  Now here's the really neat part about this bed.  While the geraniums are growing up, the potatoes are growing down.  When the potato plant starts getting really tall, it's usually the dead heat of summer, and the geraniums are glad to have the shade to get a break.  To thank the potatoes, the geraniums scare away the Japanese beetles, which also seem to appear nearly the same time.  See how this works?  And isn't it so cool?  Direct plant your potatoes, but transplant your geraniums.

So let's make you a bed that you can start with in Northern Illinois, in early spring.  Just remember - be ready to cover at a moment's notice!!!!!

Wow - that'll get your attention!  So many colors!  Here we go:  the red dots are beets.  Most beets finish by 60 days, so if you plant them mid-April, you will have beets by mid-June.  You can do  16 beets a square foot.  The purple dots in with the beets are kohlrabi (we grow purple kohlrabi, so the dots are purple).  They require roughly the same spacing as the beets.  The neat thing about the kohlrabi/beet interplanting is that the beets bulb below the soil, while the kohlrabi bulbs above the soil.  Ok, moving on.  The magenta dots are chard. Rainbow, Swiss or green - you choose.  We eat a LOT of chard in my house when it's in season.  It requires about the same spacing as the beets.  The bright green squares are snow peas.  Grow them in a tomato cage.  That will contain the vines.  When you consider a standard tomato cage that has 3 posts that go into the dirt, you can visualize this a bit better:  plant 6 sets of peas/cage.  One set of three goes next to each post individually.  The remaining three go between the posts.  In early June, when these babies start to put on pods, we eat them for breakfast.  They are that sweet and delicious and healthy. Last, but not least, those little white dots are radishes.  Now, I'm not a huge radish fan.  But Bubba is.  And so is Grandma.  He takes her radishes that he grows.  They crunch away contentedly and bond.  Life is wonderful.  Before I forget - all the plants in this configuration prefer direct seeding.  Also, in an early spring bed, you can start spinach and lettuces - direct seed.

Did I set your head spinning with ideas?  Well, the best rule to remember is to only plant and grow what you know your family will eat.  Start there, then look for ways to interplant to conserve space and benefit the plants.  Start seeds now for planting in your summer garden, and in a few weeks you can start your early spring garden right in the dirt.  When your summer is hitting its peak, start thinking about what will enjoy the cooler weather of fall before frost.  Spinach is a good choice, and so are lettuces.  Both will grow quickly because of the warmer soil, but the cool nights and shorter days will keep them from bolting (going to seed).

Here's your fancy word of the day:  succession planting.  That's what it's called when you follow this type of crop rotation.  You can now impress all your neighbors and co-workers by telling them you are developing a crop rotation schedule for your garden.  And trust me, they'll be impressed!

Something else to remember - add plenty - as in lots and lots - of organic matter (i.e., compost) to the soil between plantings.  You can also use organic fertilizers, applied per package directions.  Here's why:  your beets will "eat" the nutrition from the soil, and whatever they use up is now on your plate.  The plant going in the soil behind those beets or snow peas or lettuces needs that nutrition, too.  Be sure to work it in thoroughly so you get good production from those that come behind.

To make your own garden plans, use some graph paper and a PENCIL (have an eraser handy).  Think about how much space each plant needs, then sketch it out.  Read the books to determine which plants will play nicely with others.  Add visual interest and pest protection with flowers and herbs.  Put larger, taller plants in the center, then work down and out.  Have fun with it - embrace it as a creative challenge, not a chore.

So instead of dreaming tonight in black and white, or in color - dream in dirt!

Let's Get the Garden Party Started!!!

Are you a seasoned gardener, and going through soil depravation?  Maybe you're a first time gardener, and you're not sure where to start?  Pull up a chair and let's chat...



I started gardening seriously 5 years ago.  I was going through a very stressful time, I'd always wanted to have a little vegie patch where the kids and I could work together, and the timing was perfect.  I worked my stress out moving compost, mixing it with a few other necessities, and weeding and improving a small plot loaned to us by my in-laws.  That summer, we grew snow peas, some alfalfa for our bunnies, and a few beets.  A LOT of what else we tried failed.  But that's ok - how else do you learn?

I based what I did on what I learned in this book:

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

I also had read the original many years ago.  The basic premise is that you don't need a half acre plot to grow a bunch of vegetables for your family.  You can get quite a good yield from 16 square feet.  And I can tell you from experience that this is true.

Two other books you should read:

Roses Love Garlic by Louise Riotte

and also Louise's other book, Carrots Love Tomatoes.

Why these books?  Well, Mel's books make gardening accessible for anyone.  And I mean ANYONE!  When I built our big garden beds after borrowing the little garden from the in-laws, I combined what he used in the first book with what he does in the second book.  I also used a technique I learned about from several other sources called double digging.  In a few weeks, when the soil is warmer (and hopefully more thawed out), I'll show you what I mean by this - in the meantime, if you are curious, you can Google.  Our beds are specifically sized and laid out to do square foot gardening.

And Louise - she reminds me of my farmer grandma.  She shows you how certain plants, when grown together, help each other by scaring away pests or improving the soil.  And guess what?  Healthy soil makes healthy plants, and healthy plants generally don't get eaten that badly by bugs.  I say generally because there are some exceptions, but I digress.

For  three years, in our own garden, we've put geraniums in with our potatoes to keep out the Japanese Beetles.  And it works.  This past summer, in the community garden that I worked at, we put some of her other suggestions to the test.  We planted zinnias near the cabbage family plants.  Guess what?  No worms eating the plants to the ground.  In the plots that didn't have zinnias in or near them?  Stalks!  Yep, that's all we got!

Another suggestion in her books that's more commonly known is planting marigolds.  These scare away just about everything else.  Plus, they are bright and sunny and cheery.  And, they will pretty much grow anywhere for anyone.

So this weekend, take some time to get your hands on the books, and do you some learnin'.  Tomorrow, we'll talk about what comes next...

Happy Saturday!