What is Lasagna Style Gardening?

If you are new to gardening, you might not be familiar yet with techniques like tilling the ground and digging for certain types of drainage.

In this case, if you are new to gardening, a good method to use is called lasagna style gardening. This type of gardening is also sometimes called layer gardening. Here are some things to know about this method of planting.

The Basics of a Lasagna-Style Garden

When you want to know what a lasagna style garden is, all you need to do is think about an actual lasagna. The point is that it is a type of casserole where there are layers of ingredients. You have a layer of sauce, a layer of noodles, a layer of meat, and a layer of cheese. You keep repeating the layers until you reach the top of the dish. Lasagna gardening is the same way. You are layering the different ingredients for planting in the ground. It is an easy way for beginners to learn about building great soil for growing their own food.

Benefits of Using The Lasagna Method

There are quite a few reasons to use this method. First of all, the lasagna style garden can be started nearly any time of year. So if you are having a mild winter without frost, but you aren’t planting until spring, go ahead and start creating the basis of the garden. By the time spring comes, you have the area prepared for planting. It really does make it a lot easier.

The very first spring after moving to our current homestead, we started our garden in the lasagna method. We had bare, very sandy soil that was not great for planting and no compost bin yet so I figured I would start the garden with this method and add major nutrients to the soil while also using up kitchen waste and trimmings from around the yard.

This is our first spring garden. We had tilled one long row and amended it with worm castings and planted it with garlic before winter and in the spring we started our layers of lasagna gardening. You can see large rocks surrounding the beds, they were holding down the cardboard.

Another benefit is that you are using up a lot of yard waste and food waste that would otherwise have gone to the garbage, as well as other materials that frequently end up in the trash can or dumpster. It is like an automatic recycling system that also helps with your gardening efforts. Or like composting without the big compost bin.

Materials to Use in Your Lasagna Garden

Now you’re probably wondering what materials go in these layers. This can be just whatever you have on hand. You might have cardboard at home, so you can start with that, then add a layer of old leaves, followed by a layer of straw or newspaper, and a layer or grass clippings. There are many ways to do this with whatever you have on hand.

You can also add layers of coffee grounds, seaweed, wood chips, veggie or fruit peels, prunings, and just about anything you would normally add to compost. Instead of mixing them together, you are layering them one by one. As the layers start breaking down, they create valuable nutrients for the soil.

If you top all your layers with a couple inches of good topsoil and then mulch, you can plant some things right away. Things like lettuces and squashes and peas and beans, things that grow above ground. For root vegetables like carrots and onions and beets, I would wait till the following year when the layers have broken down into a rich soil.

The Basics of a Lasagna-Style Garden — The zucchini and summer squashes loved the lasagna style gardening!

I hope you have enjoyed and hopefully learned something about lasagna gardening. It really can be a great way to start out both gardening and composting.

Be sure to check out more gardening related posts below.

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