Lasagna Gardening / Stout method / Improvised!

Well, I started the "I need encouragement" thread...wow, a long time ago and encouragement I received. First thank-you all so much.In addition to my problem yard/soil I was in a bad auto accident late summer of 2007. Thought my big garden dreams were over. Well, they're not, I've really had to re-assess what type of garden I NEEEDED and realized I'm not gong to have a victory garden, or version of a Botanical Garden or a garden like one on TV, you know the kind of garden I think we all see in our minds eye in the middle of winter when we're filling out our catalogue orders, starting too many seeds and memorizing garden books. I also had to come to grips with my physical limitations and just plain be happy with what I still have. So....to the point of my subject line. My yard was a soybean or corn farm about 30 years ago- I thought that would be great, however, i soon learned that it actually meant it was completly depleted of nutrients, driven over by heavy machinery, and turned into HARD dry clay. Can't even pry a sharp edge shovel, cracks in the summer, gray and red clay. Now add cars parked on my garden spot, horse and human traffic, weeds galore and burned building materials. And I thought I wanted a garden. After my accident, I realized I NEEDED a garden more than ever. So I thought I would try Lasagna Gardening because of the no work enticement, but I didn't have all the recommended ingredients. The Stout method sounded good, but I wanted results a little sooner, so I improvised, like all gardeners do when their desires out grow their budget. I figured the conceept of both were really based on building a compost pile on the garden spot instead of in a bin, layering materials in green, brown, green, brown order.Step 1. Soliciting my friends and family to donate newspaper, grass clippings and leaves. Step 2 Collecting as much manure as possible and saving it in a pile to compost. (I have horses now, but I have in the past just driven up to a farm and asked the owners for manure, horse, cow, chicken and I've never been turned down) Step 3. Wait for promise of good rain and lay down Gypsum and lime on the grass and let the rain water it in good. Step 4. Layer about 10 sheets of newspaper directly over the grass. I used a 2x4 to hold it down until I got a row finished and then wet it down really sopping wet. Then came grass clippings, dry leaves, manure, and old hay on top. This is time consuming, but not difficult. Water between each layer. I usually only did one 20 foot row at a time because of the amount of materials I had. The last row went in around Nov.1 .Over the winter all I did was throw ashes on it once and a while. So with great curiosity and hope I just peeled away the hay. WOW. SOIL. Millions of worms and about 6 inches of pretty good garden soil.Still clayish but workable. Put my tomatoes, onions and basil in already. So, my idea is NOT new, I just wanted to share that the lasagna/stout method works with whatever materials you have. I will continue to layer and after a few years I'm sure it'll improve. Just think green, brown, green, brown.......

Congratulations on your new gardens!! We did an improvised lasagna garden this year. We put down cardboard to cover the area, then watered that down. Piled leaves on top of that. Watered. Then we put in our planting medium and mixed in lots of compost and native dirt (thicky, heavy, black clay) and other amendments. Then we planted. Topped it off with a thick layer of mulch to help keed the weeds out and the moisture in during the hottest part of the day/summer. Things are going very well here, too!

I've heard of lasagna gardening and will go that route as well. What is the "Stout" reference? The "creator" of the idea?

lisaoliver - Your post is great encouragement! And you hit upon a point that's frustrated me for a long time. While I don't do much vegetable gardening (too much shade), a lot of us are enticed by the magazine articles and tv programs with their perfectly groomed garden beds and seemingly limitless budgets. While these encourage us to at least give it a shot, we can also be disappointed with our results when compared to what is published. It's always great to hear of success stories on a more realistic level.
I have a lot of clay too with fine silt on top. I find that if you can keep that top layer from drying out by using some type of mulch, the water is more easily absorbed and the plants do better.

Isn't it funny! We always hear not to compare yourself to a models pics in magazines because it's not real and here we are on Dave's sumising that the gardens in catalogs and on TV can be unobtainable also :)

It's true though...

Wasn't that Ruth Stout? I think she just piled on the hay or straw 8" -12" thick or so and when ready to plant, just pulled the mulch back. I don't remember, but I'm guessing she placed the mulch at least a couple of weeks before planting. She also had a great idea of using a 5" (?) piece of PVC pipe to plant her seeds. Just put the end where she wanted the seed and dropped the seed down the pipe.

I started with a hay field 7 years ago and didn't have the money to buy all of the bagged amendments that it really could have used, so I know what you're going through. We did till the main original garden the first time 7 years ago and then we just bagged our grass (hay) clippings when we mowed and I dumped them in the garden on the rows. Either at the end of the season or in the spring, I kind of work the old mulch into the soil and have absolutely wonderful soil now.

Last year, I just dumped the clippings on a what was to become a new garden area in rows without any tilling and this spring that soil underneath of what's left of the mulch already looks really good and I haven't even turned in the old mulch yet.

I've mentioned this on a couple of other threads, but this is good news to share. On a gardening show on the radio, there was a discussion of how worms are the best "fertilizer" for a garden, because of the worm castings they leave and the tunneling they do. Since the mulches attract worms, plus keep moisture in and weeds to a minimum, all the more reason to mulch!

My garden is not a model garden, in fact it's pretty ugly, but it does grow vegetables. This year in addition to my containers and 3x20 bed on a last minute whim I built a small 5x5 lasagna garden using newspaper, grass, hay, leaves, coir, composted horse manure, and potting soil. I planted in it the day after building it and so far everything is doing ok.

If it's growing vegetables, it can't be ugly!

"Stout" does refer to Ruth Stout. She is one of the first garden writers to bring to our attention layering, in her case what she called "spoiled hay" between plants. As she points out it is what has occured in nature all along. Now, now, Dorkasaurus, there is no such thing as an ugly garden. Try "natural" or "experimental" or just say it is the "dorkasaurus method". A close friend of mine once had to go out of town for 5 weeks at the end of summer. When she returned she had weeds up over her head! I helped her weed some of it until we both were exausted, muddy and frustrated. She erected a sign that said"snake sanctuary" and left it alone until frost and then we burned it. True story about improvisation and gardening humor. Gotta have them both.

My garden is anything but "pretty" the raised beds are crooked and there are leaves everywhere you look, but the veggies don't care and neither do I. Pretty, organized gardens are for magazines and perfectionists. The only place where I practice perfection is at work - and that's what they pay me for (giggle)

You can buy earthworm castings and blend in your soil. You don't need much, though! The castings contain the earthworm waste as well as eggs, so it'll help build your worm population. However, if you use chemicals they'll kill the earthworms eventually.