Hungry for lasagna?

DIANNE J. GELINAS

Dig in with the Mas­ter Gardeners

The lasagna I am refer­ring to is a gar­den method not an entrée.

Lasagna gar­den­ing was started and made pop­u­lar in the late 1990’s. It is an age old idea to start com­post­ing with a new twist or two. These days we are look­ing for easy ways to go green and this is just one. This sys­tem intro­duces gar­den­ers to an eco­nom­i­cal sys­tem of soil mod­i­fi­ca­tion that mim­ics nature itself. A walk in the woods will show you how lay­ers of mat­ter pile up, with­out any human help to make great soil and a per­fect place to prop­a­gate plants, herbs, flow­ers and trees.

As the OSU Exten­sion com­post­ing fact sheet #HGY-1189–99 states, “the com­post microbes need a cer­tain amount of water and air to sus­tain itself.” Instead of yard clip­pings and kitchen wastes using valu­able space in our land­fills, why not try com­post­ing? You can start by com­post­ing and reduc­ing the pes­ti­cides and fer­til­iz­ers you use. There are no hard and fast rules about what can be com­posted. Your bed must con­tain dif­fer­ent types of organic mat­ter in addi­tion to air and water. You should aim for alter­nat­ing lay­ers of brown mat­ter (car­bon sources) with lay­ers of green mat­ter (nitro­gen sources).

Com­mon brown sources include: dry leaves, news­pa­per, and straw, card­board (may be shred­ded), chopped brush and corn stalks. Green items to con­sider include grass clip­pings, com­post, kitchen scraps (do not include meat, bones, or dairy) cof­fee grounds and egg shells. Most mate­r­ial that you find right in your yard can be used in composting.

Now let’s start with the “recipe” for Lasagna Gardening:

1.) Start by exam­in­ing your prop­erty and iden­ti­fy­ing a site where you plan to build your gar­den. This site should be close to a water sup­ply and should have plenty of sunlight.

2.) If the site has grass present do a one-time turn on the grass. If the soil is pre­dom­i­nantly clay you may have to work it a lit­tle deeper. Try not to tam­per down the dirt by walk­ing on it. This is a good time to men­tion plac­ing card­board around the gar­den to use as a path­way when plant­ing or harvesting.

3.) Then add 4 to 6 inches of news­pa­pers (do not include glossy adver­tise­ments). You will need to wet the papers and con­tinue to water each layer, keep­ing the pile like a sponge that has been rung out. This envi­ron­ment (dark and moist) will lure the earth­worms to your bed. Think of the worms as your team of rototillers.

4.) Fol­low­ing steps include alter­nat­ing 4 to 6 inches of grass clip­pings and green trim­mings from your yard with brown lay­ers. The brown mate­ri­als include straw, saw­dust or leaves. Keep lay­er­ing until you reach a bed thick­ness from 18 inches to 3 feet.

5.) Fin­ish your Lasagna Gar­den with a final layer of news­pa­pers, leaves or mulch. Make sure your ingre­di­ents are free of weeds; oth­er­wise you may have some ger­mi­na­tion of weeds before you plant.

Finally, let your lasagna “cook.” The amount of time you cook your bed is based on when you intend to plant. If you wish to plant imme­di­ately you will need to add 2 to 3 inches of com­post before putting the plants in the ground.

To main­tain your gar­den you will need to keep it wet and check on the set­tling of the bed. Also, when you see the activ­ity of worms you know your site is work­ing. You can add alter­nat­ing lay­ers to your bed each year to keep the com­post­ing suc­cess­ful. If you want to wait before plant­ing, just let it cook a while longer. Test­ing your soil for pH and other nutri­ents every year will let you see if any sup­ple­ments should be added.

This method of gar­den­ing has two pri­mary advan­tages. It is eco­nom­i­cal, by mak­ing use of prod­ucts you have on hand. It is green, by using resources that are des­tined for the landfill.

The prac­ti­cal­ity of this type of gar­den­ing is timely when con­sid­er­ing our eco­nomic state. Fol­low­ing this recipe will allow you a weed-free gar­den with excep­tional soil in which you can enjoy an abun­dant har­vest with the pur­pose of cre­at­ing real lasagna for your whole fam­ily to enjoy!

Dianne J. Geli­nas is an OSU Exten­sion Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Volunteer.

Schol­ar­ship opportunity

The OSU Exten­sion Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Asso­ci­a­tion is offer­ing a schol­ar­ship in the amount of $1,000 to a Delawre County Ohio res­i­dent cur­rently pur­su­ing a career in Hor­ti­cul­ture, Agri­cul­ture, Land­scape Archi­tec­ture, Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies or Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence. Schol­ar­ship infor­ma­tion can be found at delaware.osu.edu/topics/master-gardener-volunteer-program/scholarship. The sub­mis­sion dead­line has been extended to June 30.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jun 11 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.