After a gardening column last month in which I mentioned removing rocks and digging up the area where you plan to put your vegetable garden, I got a call from a reader who told me that was the hard way.  The caller was Pearl O’Neill of Hereford, who at 92 is still growing some of her own food and teaching others to garden.  “The easy way,” she said, “is lasagna gardening.”  In fact she had just harvested a couple of cabbages from her own lasagna garden. 

This sounded rather appetizing and fun so I ordered the book,  “Lasagna Gardening” by Patricia Lanza and subtitled “A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens:  No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!”  With that catchy title and the fact that the book was published by Rodale Press, I was ready to listen.

Rodale Press was founded by Jerome Irving Rodale (1989 – 1971) who was one of the first advocates of a return to sustainable agriculture and organic gardening. He founded a publishing empire to publish magazines and books on health, his own and those by others.  These included in 1942, the Organic Gardening magazine, (the most widely read gardening magazine in the world), and Prevention magazine.

Rodale popularized the term “organic” to mean grown without pesticides which he felt were poisonous to humans.  Healthy soil required compost and not poisonous pesticides and artificial fertilizers.  He believed eating plants grown in such soil would help humans stay healthier.)

Lanza, the author of Lasagna Gardening, was a military wife with seven children who had to move every three years.  She used knowledge gained from helping her grandmother garden in the mountains of Tennessee to help her start a new garden wherever they moved to grow some of their own food. “I kept my children near me in the garden where we planted, worked and weeded our gardens together,” she writes.

She then became an innkeeper with time for only an herb garden, rhubarb and berries. When her children left home Lanza found that traditional gardening, all that digging, hoeing and weeding, was too much work.  So she experimented, searching for an easier way to have the best soil with the least effort.

The key to this type of gardening is gathering the organic lasagna ingredients used to create the layers:  newspaper, cardboard, peat moss, animal manures, shredded leaves, grass clippings, stalks, coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, compost, spoiled hay, straw or barn littler.

After outlining where to put the garden with stakes and string or a sprinkling of lime or flour, (she suggests 4 by 8 feet to start), you put down layers of ingredients you’ve assembled. For the first layer something heavy is needed to smother the existing grass and weeds.  Use thick overlapping pads of wet newspaper and cardboard. Then add 3 inches of peat moss followed by 4 to 8 inches of organic mulch material, another layer of peat moss, another of organic mulch  and so on until beds are 18 to 24 inches high.  Wet each layer after putting it down. You can “cook” your lasagna garden by leaving it to heat up and decompose for six weeks.   Simply cover the bed with black plastic and weigh down the edges with bricks.  

Or you can create a lasagna garden from scratch and plant it all in the same day.  To plant simply pull layers apart, set the plant in the hole, pull mulch back around the roots and water it thoroughly.  To sow seeds in a newly built garden, spread fine compost or damp peat moss where the seeds are to go, set the seeds in place, cover with more fine material and press down.  When the plants have two true leaves (after first pair of seed leaves), pull some of the mulch material around it to keep the soil moist and weed-free.

Lasagna gardens are full of earthworms because they provide conditions worms thrive in. 

Chapters in the book cover growing herbs, berries, vegetables and flowers the lasagna way including lots of tips and time savers on each. Artichokes, asparagus, beans, beets, cucumbers, broccoli, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, garlic, kale, lettuce, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, rhubarb, spinach, squash, chard, tomatoes, watermelon and more.  Lanza includes information on how to support crops with stakes and trellises to give an easy-to-pick harvest while taking up a minimum of space.

There is also a very helpful chapter on dealing with pests including choosing companion plants carefully, recruiting beneficial insect, making your own chemical-free sprays and foiling animal pests.

You can even do lasagna gardening in containers using wet newspaper or coffee filters to cover drainage holes and peat moss, composted manure and potting soil. After planting, cover the potting medium with a mulch such as a few layers of wet newspaper covered with shredded bark.

Needless to say yesterday afternoon saw my husband and I scrounging around for lasagna ingredients. We layered wet cardboard and newspaper, peat moss, alpaca manure, crunched up dry leaves and garden stalks and old straw bales to start a lasagna bed over a weedy, rocky place in the garden. 

Recipes

 

Broiled Lamb Chops

(by Shannon Hayes from the Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook)

 

4 rib or loin chops (at least 1 ? inches thick)

1 or 2 cloves garlic, cut into fine slivers

olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

 

Pierce lamb chops on both sides with a sharp paring knife and insert 4 to 5 garlic slivers into each side of chops.  Brush chops all over with olive oil. Sprinkle each side with salt and pepper.  Set broiler on high and broil for 5 minutes on each side for medium-rare chops. 

Peachy Spiced Lamb Chops

(by Jeanne Jones from Canyon Ranch Cooking)

 

4 (6 ounce) loin lamb chops

1/2sp garlic salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Sauce:

6 ounces dried peach halves (a cup)

2 cups chicken stock

1/2  tsp dried oregano, crushed

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4  tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4  tsp paprika

1/2  tsp salt

 tsp balsamic vinegar

Sprinkle both sides of chops with garlic salt and pepper, cover and set aside.  Combine dried peaches and stock in a saucepan and bring to boil over high heat.  Reduce heat to medium and boil, uncovered, for 5 minutes.  all to cool slightly and then spoon cooked peaches and liquid into blender.  Add all remaining ingredients and puree.  Pour mixture back into same pot to reheat.  Prepare grill or preheat broiler.  Broil lamb chops 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.  To serve, place each chop on a heated dinner plate and spoon about ? cup of sauce over top. 

 Herb Roasted Potatoes

(by Rachel Albert-Matesz from The Garden of Eating Cookbook)

 

2 pounds baby Yukon gold or other potatoes

2 tblsp olive oil

2 tsp dried, crumbled herbs or herb blend:  basil, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary or combination of Herbes de Provence

1/2 tsp black pepper or 1/2 tsp lemon pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Scrub and trim potatoes.  Halve and toss with oil, herbs and spices.  Roast in a greased 18 by 9 by 2 inch pan for 20 minutes.  Turn halves with a metal spatula, scraping to remove stuck bits and roast until tender and slightly golden, 15 to 20 minutes more.