We start to expand the garden into the lawn, by laying several thicknesses of cardboard, then we dump on whatever organic matter we have, such as the compost pile, bagged leaves we collect in the fall, what not.
we get serious when the dead leaves are put out for the city pick up.
foreground shows thick layer of compost covered with leaves, then, as on left, woodchips are added , then a layer horse manure, then hay or straw as on the right in back
sheet composting in action, as you can see, anything organic can be added, the worms will reduce it all to soil in one year.
backyard in ptogress, the back bed had haymulch applied, foreground gets topped up with whatever organic matter we produce, or bring home. in background you can see brown layer of composted wood chips,and manure.
here is the backyard, we added to the garden on the right, sticks hold down the hay from being blown away in the windy weather. on the left was lawn before, then lasagna mulch for a year, while planted to potatoes and squash, then planted to perennial flowers, as you can see further along
birds are curious too, i spread some fir boughs as xmas decoration, or actually to prevent the wind from blowing the hay off...
tomatoes, growing in a hill of rich soil on top of mulch, while a lot of volunteer, wild, tomatoes came up from the compost in the mulch, and did well just growing in there without any soil hill. Also sunflower self seeded everywhere, we eat them when young as a steamed veggie in omelettes, blend them in green smoothirs, and still have enough left to transplant, and let them grow up.
sunflowers are still edible when you steam and freeze them for lasagna greens. the flower pots on left are to give us a bit of flower color and variety in front of new bed
next spring, potted plants for color in foreground, squash and potatoes are up and growing, on right, tomatoes are getting big, this must have been late june. the old underground lawn irrigation will soon have to be raised so that the water goes evenly around!
foeground color and lots of volunteer squahes behind, they produced tons of great food!
A year later, we pull the mulch back and there is a lovely dark soil, all converted by our friends the workhorse worms! we enlarged the bed a bit, we had so much to plant!
now the puzzle to plant all the perennials we brought home from Verle's garden! in background white pipe is a raised sprinkl;er that needs to be braced, all sprinklers had to be raised, now we have underground trickle tubing to water under the mulch, preventing evaporation.
observe mulch pile in back, this was removed from this bed, it will be replaced afterwards and then covered with woodchips after irrigation tubing is laid out
berry patch is getting mulched, first step is cardboard, then organic matter, such as dead leaves, collected from neighbours, etc. we also used old sod which we dug up in spring to seed carrots, we could not wait a year for the lasagna garden to yield good soil.
berry patch in mid june. foreground fr L to R: new currant, tansy, another currant. behind: josta berry, gooseberry, and somewhre hiddeen in the mulch are curly kale, that grew 5 feet high!
now you can see the kale, this must have been mid summer
looking south, with the berry patch on the right now hidden by growing kale
wood chips are spread, manure in background ready to spread.
cardboard, leaves, mixed compost, woodchip compost, manure, haymulch to keep it moist.
transplanted sunflowers, cosmos, rudbeckias, cornflowers, more along the house we planted some high density spur type apples that produced tasty summer apples. as well as giving us a bit of a screen, like the sunflowers did on the outside.
from SE, lawn now converted to lasagna!
we have all kinds of sunflowers, which the birds enjoyed and drove the cats batty, asters and cosmos did very well, and a red gazania bloomed all summer
gazania is actually darker than that, cornflowers bloomed all summer too!
row of apples, high density spur type, as a screen, with nicotianas and dahlias for color chickenwire to keep the cats from scratching the bark!
front yard again, this was mulched in the fall of 08, click on!
we stripped the sod in front in the spring to put in a pretty front edge. lots of perennial herbs, variegated sage daylilies, thymes, more
and this was the result, much nicer than just a brown lawn!
my own selection of amaranth, w pink single zinnias and more
same place as before, now being converted, also planting a paw paw in the middle of it!
more leaves are brought in from the neighbourhood
then we tackled the front yard this fall.
berry patch the previous fall. we removed some sod as well in the front and laid it over the cardboard, along with dead leaves, compost and manure, topped off with hay mulch. we planted strawberries, currants. the following shot shows the berry patch in mid june
fall 08 we converted the front lawn, again, cardboard, then leaves, then woodchips, then manure, then hay mulch as a blanket
finished product, now the worms have a feast and in spring we can plant potatoes, and we make hills for squash, and this worked very well this last summer in the newly converted backyard.
finished product, now the worms can feast on the layercake, or lasagna garden, as we call it!
more leaves are added!
next fall we tackled the front yard, leaving a lilttle grass patch as sitting area, last stage is to cover the top with straw mulch.
next summer, potatoes, squash, tomatoes and beans proliferate.
