lasagna and sunburn
Mar. 31st, 2009 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7So today's big project was to make a new garden bed by the lasagna gardening method.
Lasagna gardening is basically lasagna composting, horizontally, with plants stuck directly in it.
To review lasagna composting-- it's a method of composting whereby instead of just mixing all the ingredients you are composting, at the right ratio (1:4 nitrogen:carbon), you layer it. A large layer of "brown" (carbon-rich materials like straw, woodchips, paper, shredded leaves, cardboard, etc), then a smallish layer of "green" (nitrogen-rich materials like food scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, etc.), and repeat until you're full, then let it sit and cook with adequate moisture until it's done. It's a slower, no-stir method. (You can turn it if you want it to go faster, though.)
So lasagna gardening is a no-dig method of building a raised bed out of brown and green materials, in layers.
This appeals to me, because my soil is very heavy clay, I have no help and few tools to cultivate it, and I have little finished compost to amend it with. I prefer to make things than to buy them, as well, so buying amendments irks me.
I didn't think about how long and difficult it would still be, though. I don't have quite the right materials. Most people set up a new lasagna bed in the fall. You don't have to, though. But as I'm going along... well, one of the good, easy, high-bulk, free options for a nitrogen layer is grass clippings. Where am I going to get grass clippings in March?
So I'm only about half done with the bed, since I had to spend so long scrounging nitrogen sources. But here's what I've got so far.
I bought a big thing of sphagnum peat moss, and a small thing of composted manure. I wanted to buy bloodmeal but couldn't find any!
Over the winter I got a bag of leaves from my parents, and a bag of wood ashes, so I have those.
I have one bag of finished compost from the heap I took down this fall. I have a currently-cooking heap that went from late summer through the winter, but didn't get well-turned, so there's a section that's mostly done, and a section that's not at all done.
I have a huge pile of sticks/straw/stalks collected from the yard.
I have a small pile of weeds and sod bits and the like.
I have a lot of paper, and cardboard boxes I've saved to reuse instead of recycling.
So I soaked the cardboard boxes and paper in water, then laid them down where I wanted the bed to be, right over the grass. (I did rake it somewhat level first.) Wet makes it lay flatter and not blow away. It was windy today!
I put several layers of paper to completely block the light and smother the grass, and attract worms up from the soil.
Then I put down a layer of stalks and things from the yard, to round out the layer of 'brown' atop the 'green' of the grass. This was problematic, though, because the stalks are so springy that layers above want to just fall right through. I trampled the stalks as flat as I could, and filled them in with dried grass that was standing loose in the yard. I also raked stalks and grass up around the sides of what will be the raised bed, to keep the layers from being narrow piles in the middle.
Dry grass is "green" material, but since it's dried there's little nutrition left in it. Bloodmeal would help with that. If I had any. :/ I'm sort of roughly saying that dried plant stalks = straw, and dried grass leaves = hay, since that's true, but hay is cured so as not to lose so much of its nutrients as grass does when it dries naturally.
Anyway.
I took pictures of all these stages. So I basically did a layer of straw, and then filled it in with a layer of hay, and then put down a very thin layer of paper just because when I tried to put the sphagnum stuff over the top, it disappeared. So I put more wet paper on, then applied the moss, which is very powdery. Then I wanted to use a layer of grass clippings.
Guess what. Lawns around here aren't even green yet, let alone growing. So I was out of luck, I thought. Well, no matter: I've been saving kitchen scraps since December or so. I have a big compost bucket with a lid; it doesn't smell, and I put everything in it. Lots and lots and lots of coffee grounds. Oh yes. And all my veggie scraps. Carrot peelings, potato ends, parsnip bits, squash intestines. All soupy and delicious.
The bin, a big tub that cat litter came in originally, was basically full. Sweet, I thought.
Then I stirred it well with a stick.
Oh. Not so big now.
I dumped it into a big galvanized tub. It covered the bottom, but that was it.
So I added some manure I had bought. "Humus and manure", $2 for a big ol' bag of it. (2 cu ft? Something like that.)
Still not that much.
Well hell. I opened up my black plastic composter and looked into it. There's plenty of stuff in there, I thought. I dragged a bunch of it out, much of it pretty well-rotted, and mixed it in with the fresh compost.
Suddenly I hit the mother lode of old grass clippings that hadn't rotted because they hadn't been well-mixed.
Grass clippings! Six to eight months old! But the nutrients hadn't really leached out. So bingo! In they went.
I pulled out some half-rotted stalks that hadn't been chipped fine enough to go into the composter either, and used them to shore up the edges of the bed. Unfortunately I think there were some weed seeds in there. Foolish me. I will have to mulch heavily.
So I got a layer of green on there, but it was getting late and I was getting a little sunburnt! I know! Sunburnt! Yes!
So instead of putting down another layer of moss, which would get washed away on Wednesday when it rained all morning like it's supposed to, I left it with the 'green' layer topmost. Some rain might tamp things down and I can re-evaluate Weds afternoon or Thurs morning.
Anyway, it was an adventure. I have photos of each stage. I have lots and lots of stalks left, though i have a pile of them in the driveway chopped much more finely. So I may use them for mulch-- there's no weed seeds in them. It's like straw mulch only... I dunno, less expensive, for one thing...
There's some benefit in having left my yard to go to weeds last year. :) If I hadn't, I wouldn't have all this great organic material to construct beds out of this year.
That's what I tell myself.
I just went to practice and totally rocked it. It was a good hard skate. I am feeling really good so I'm just going to post this, though I had decided before I left that the draft was way too wordy. Oh well! I'm not getting paid for this so I write what i want, right?
Fi's home from her tradeshow in Chicago and her reaction to all my garden geekery was, "You're so weird. [Baby Sister] would be proud."
Lasagna gardening is basically lasagna composting, horizontally, with plants stuck directly in it.
To review lasagna composting-- it's a method of composting whereby instead of just mixing all the ingredients you are composting, at the right ratio (1:4 nitrogen:carbon), you layer it. A large layer of "brown" (carbon-rich materials like straw, woodchips, paper, shredded leaves, cardboard, etc), then a smallish layer of "green" (nitrogen-rich materials like food scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, etc.), and repeat until you're full, then let it sit and cook with adequate moisture until it's done. It's a slower, no-stir method. (You can turn it if you want it to go faster, though.)
So lasagna gardening is a no-dig method of building a raised bed out of brown and green materials, in layers.
This appeals to me, because my soil is very heavy clay, I have no help and few tools to cultivate it, and I have little finished compost to amend it with. I prefer to make things than to buy them, as well, so buying amendments irks me.
I didn't think about how long and difficult it would still be, though. I don't have quite the right materials. Most people set up a new lasagna bed in the fall. You don't have to, though. But as I'm going along... well, one of the good, easy, high-bulk, free options for a nitrogen layer is grass clippings. Where am I going to get grass clippings in March?
So I'm only about half done with the bed, since I had to spend so long scrounging nitrogen sources. But here's what I've got so far.
I bought a big thing of sphagnum peat moss, and a small thing of composted manure. I wanted to buy bloodmeal but couldn't find any!
Over the winter I got a bag of leaves from my parents, and a bag of wood ashes, so I have those.
I have one bag of finished compost from the heap I took down this fall. I have a currently-cooking heap that went from late summer through the winter, but didn't get well-turned, so there's a section that's mostly done, and a section that's not at all done.
I have a huge pile of sticks/straw/stalks collected from the yard.
I have a small pile of weeds and sod bits and the like.
I have a lot of paper, and cardboard boxes I've saved to reuse instead of recycling.
So I soaked the cardboard boxes and paper in water, then laid them down where I wanted the bed to be, right over the grass. (I did rake it somewhat level first.) Wet makes it lay flatter and not blow away. It was windy today!
I put several layers of paper to completely block the light and smother the grass, and attract worms up from the soil.
Then I put down a layer of stalks and things from the yard, to round out the layer of 'brown' atop the 'green' of the grass. This was problematic, though, because the stalks are so springy that layers above want to just fall right through. I trampled the stalks as flat as I could, and filled them in with dried grass that was standing loose in the yard. I also raked stalks and grass up around the sides of what will be the raised bed, to keep the layers from being narrow piles in the middle.
Dry grass is "green" material, but since it's dried there's little nutrition left in it. Bloodmeal would help with that. If I had any. :/ I'm sort of roughly saying that dried plant stalks = straw, and dried grass leaves = hay, since that's true, but hay is cured so as not to lose so much of its nutrients as grass does when it dries naturally.
Anyway.
I took pictures of all these stages. So I basically did a layer of straw, and then filled it in with a layer of hay, and then put down a very thin layer of paper just because when I tried to put the sphagnum stuff over the top, it disappeared. So I put more wet paper on, then applied the moss, which is very powdery. Then I wanted to use a layer of grass clippings.
Guess what. Lawns around here aren't even green yet, let alone growing. So I was out of luck, I thought. Well, no matter: I've been saving kitchen scraps since December or so. I have a big compost bucket with a lid; it doesn't smell, and I put everything in it. Lots and lots and lots of coffee grounds. Oh yes. And all my veggie scraps. Carrot peelings, potato ends, parsnip bits, squash intestines. All soupy and delicious.
The bin, a big tub that cat litter came in originally, was basically full. Sweet, I thought.
Then I stirred it well with a stick.
Oh. Not so big now.
I dumped it into a big galvanized tub. It covered the bottom, but that was it.
So I added some manure I had bought. "Humus and manure", $2 for a big ol' bag of it. (2 cu ft? Something like that.)
Still not that much.
Well hell. I opened up my black plastic composter and looked into it. There's plenty of stuff in there, I thought. I dragged a bunch of it out, much of it pretty well-rotted, and mixed it in with the fresh compost.
Suddenly I hit the mother lode of old grass clippings that hadn't rotted because they hadn't been well-mixed.
Grass clippings! Six to eight months old! But the nutrients hadn't really leached out. So bingo! In they went.
I pulled out some half-rotted stalks that hadn't been chipped fine enough to go into the composter either, and used them to shore up the edges of the bed. Unfortunately I think there were some weed seeds in there. Foolish me. I will have to mulch heavily.
So I got a layer of green on there, but it was getting late and I was getting a little sunburnt! I know! Sunburnt! Yes!
So instead of putting down another layer of moss, which would get washed away on Wednesday when it rained all morning like it's supposed to, I left it with the 'green' layer topmost. Some rain might tamp things down and I can re-evaluate Weds afternoon or Thurs morning.
Anyway, it was an adventure. I have photos of each stage. I have lots and lots of stalks left, though i have a pile of them in the driveway chopped much more finely. So I may use them for mulch-- there's no weed seeds in them. It's like straw mulch only... I dunno, less expensive, for one thing...
There's some benefit in having left my yard to go to weeds last year. :) If I hadn't, I wouldn't have all this great organic material to construct beds out of this year.
That's what I tell myself.
I just went to practice and totally rocked it. It was a good hard skate. I am feeling really good so I'm just going to post this, though I had decided before I left that the draft was way too wordy. Oh well! I'm not getting paid for this so I write what i want, right?
Fi's home from her tradeshow in Chicago and her reaction to all my garden geekery was, "You're so weird. [Baby Sister] would be proud."
