This will soon be surrounded by a wattle fence, and a lovely natural gate. I am planning beans, corn, various squashes, p-nuts and potatoes in this garden. The fence to the left is my old garden that will soon be my "Mystery Garden". I found it didn't get quite as much sun as needed, so this year my plan was to retire it and use it as a compost bin. Of course, as I earlier stated in a blog, I just so happen to have a mixed bag of orphan seeds that really need a home, thus the "Mystery Garden". However, for today, both plots patiently waiting for new plantings while my upper garden near the deck is receiving new plants on almost a daily basis. .
This plant just in!! My neighbor Rick, grew fennel last year, and it came back this year. He has no clue what to do with it, so he gave it to me!! YES!! Always a place for adopted veggies in my space!
Okay, so I started reading about no dig gardens a few years ago. Not because I am lazy, but because the thought of chopping up all of my lovely worms with a tiller makes me quite sad! During my no dig quest, I stumbled upon lasagna gardening and was quite intrigued! (NO this does not include pasta sauce! ) To lasagna garden simply means to layer your ingredients as you would lasagna. I began last fall with newspapers to kill the grass. This was a bit challenging due to wind and rain, the papers kept escaping all over my yard daily. I then applied a layer of cardboard, which imprisoned the paper quite nicely. After this set for a few weeks, I began layering with grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, manure, and repeated this process. Over the winter I continued to add kitchen scraps, much to the raccoons delight, and this spring did a bit more grass and mushroom compost.
Whew.. now it's time to plant! The nice part is of course, big fat healthy worms, lots of organic matter for my plants, as well as low amounts of weeds. In order to plant you will need to cut out a hole and plug in your plants. With seeds, I spread a bit of dirt around and pat. They will soon dig down and venture below the cardboard for a joyous feast!
Now, so far I really love Lasagna Gardening, BUT, the downside is there as well. I need to be careful that my plants don't get fungus from too much dampness amongst their roots. Also, the photo above shows my row of Chinese cabbage, okay, what used to be my Chinese cabbage. This kind of gardening gives slugs a lot of space to live under leaves and such. So, they have devoured my cabbage, a bit of my artichokes, and even my newly sewn parsley. What to do? I tried the beer method, and not very helpful. I think it just gave them something to wash down their greens with. I searched for the "organic" slug bait, and have found none for sale locally, so I will probably shop online for this, and perhaps that will annihilate these nasty glutenous buggers!!
In the mean time, I pluck the little slimey's and either drown them or squash them. It works to keep the nibbles at bay, but keeps me quite busy! Until next time, Nameste! Teresa/Gertie
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