Beginner Gardening: lasagna beds, 0 by John_Yeoman

John_Yeoman wrote:
Yay, Lasagna Gardening is a cute - but hardly original - idea from Patrica Lanza (find the book on Amazon).

The idea of no-dig gardening 'started' in the 19th century (it's well attested in the Journal of Horticulture, 1872). It was pioneered in the US by Scott Nearing in the '30s, popularised by Ruth Stout in the '70s, and has been a pillar of Bill Mollison's permaculture since the '80s.

Ms Lanza simply added the idea of laying newspaper over the soil first, to suppress weeds.

You can get the same effect, in the most weedy garden, by digging a shallow 6in-8in deep trench. Then putting in a gutter made from corrugated cardboard. Fill with good weed-free soil. Add your transplants.

The cardboard keeps the weeds out long enough for the transplants to sink their roots.

By the time the cardboard has rotted (around 7 weeks), the transplants have got their roots down and can fight their own battle with weeds.

This is far better than lasagna gardening. Because deep mulch attracts molluscs.

Verily, I have used cardboard gutters for several years all over my weed-infested paddock - and find them much preferable to mollusc-attracting, deep mulch.

And I never have to weed...

Here's a pix of Swiss chard growing away in cardboard gutters - surrounded by weeds.