My Garden Adventures

A friend of mine at the Food Bank where I work told me this winter that they have had great success growing vegetables with a Lasagna Garden. After looking on the internet, doing research on this form of gardening, I decided to give it a try.

Today I was in town so bought some plants while at the grocery store. I got Kale, Marigolds and Irish Moss. I came home and did a bunch of work in the yard, including:
- prepared a raised bed garden for planting... cleaned it up from last year. Planted the Kale plants in that raised bed garden.
- worked more on making my Lasagna Garden. I brought a fairly decayed bale of straw over from where it was in another part of the yard and dumped it out of the wheelbarrow. Took the wheelbarrow over to the compost pile on the other side of the yard, filled it with partially decayed compost, brought it over and spread it on what I already had made of the Lasagna Garden from another day (branches, old boards, old cardboard, etc.). Spread some of the straw over the compost layer.
- cleaned up the Iris plants, removing last year's, now dead, leaves & flower stalks and putting them onto the Lasagna Garden.
- cleaned up the last year's, now dead, growth from herbs, from Lavender, from Tomatoes, etc. and again put it all onto the Lasagna Garden.
- stood up the toilet that had fallen during the winter, made sure it won't fall again, planted some of the Marigold flowers into the tank and the bowl of the toilet. Put the rest of the Marigold plants into some dirt to protect them until I am ready to plant them elsewhere, not sure yet where that will be.
- decided to extend the Lasagna Garden a couple more feet, right to touching the stacked tires which are planters, so found a couple more bits of wood to use as frames for the bed, also packed some bricks over to fill in a gap. Still need to find a bit more to finish off the frame extension then will put down thick layers of newspapers and start putting layers of compost, straw, old wood bits, etc in that end too.

Now, after all that work, my body hurts rather badly... and yet I feel good about having done all of the above. I actually didn't want to come in, but knew I had to.

I am so grateful that I have a yard and that I can grow my own vegetables, herbs and fruit. I know that I am blessed.