What do the no-till garden, sheet composting and lasagna gardening have in common? They are the same thing with different names.
I had read about people not tilling their soil when preparing new garden beds. Instead, they "compost in place." After reading a piece by the
The theory is that by leaving the soil alone and adding materials only to the top, the microbes and other creatures that live in our soil are undisturbed. Weed seeds are not brought to the surface and will not germinate. The soil critters move up into these layers as they decay and work them into the native soil.
Last fall, I decided to try this idea on one bed. The other beds were double dug with compost as I have done in the past.
It takes a bit of planning to get started. You need newsprint, plain cardboard and other sources of mulching materials such as dried leaves and lawn clippings.
First I watered the soil thoroughly, then I began layering. The first layer was newspaper, followed by dried fallen leaves, cardboard, compost and chicken manure. Then I repeated the whole process to build a pile four to six inches high, watering each layer as I put it in place.
In the East, where winters are severe, some piles are one to two feet tall, and the snow does the work of compacting it. Many no-till gardeners add their grass clippings to the mix. All the layers keep the weed seed from germinating.
The winter rains are the key to starting the composting process. Nature did not cooperate last winter, so I occasionally added water to the pile and checked under a corner to see how wet the soil was. The microbes, worms and other composters moved in and did the job from below. I knew from my experience with worm composting that worms love cardboard, so it seemed logical that worms would come.
By spring, the pile had not moved much, but I decided I would try to plant in it anyway just to see the difference. For a true test, I would need a control area with the same type of crop.
I had 24 broccoli plants, so I divided them, with half going in the test bed and the rest in the control bed. To plant in the test bed, I had to cut holes through the pile to get the plant into the soil below.
From the beginning, it was apparent that the plants in the test bed were doing much better. They grew taller and had fewer problems with snails and slugs, possibly because snails and slugs don't like moving over the layers. There were no weeds and I noticed I was using less water on the test plants. I also planted eggplants and green peppers in the test bed. I had no control bed for those items, but they seemed to perform better than they had in previous years.
After two months, the test bed was clearly in the lead. I had lost six of the plants in the control bed and none in the test bed. The test group was much taller and healthier looking. I harvested the first broccoli from the test bed on July 2, with nothing from the control bed until July 14, which was when I picked my second crop from the test bed. The test bed continued to out produce the control bed.
My fertilizing regimen was the same for both beds. The only variable was the compost layers.
This fall, I am preparing to layer another bed. I have been saving newsprint all year and have a huge collection of cardboard. I also plan to add more layers to the bed from last year. The leaves and some of the newsprint are still visible in this bed, but the cardboard is gone. I would have thought it would be the reverse. Hopefully there will be sufficient rain this winter to give my beds the ultimate test.
Preparing the cardboard is the biggest task, as you must remove any plastic tape and staples. I have also read about covering the pile with burlap to keep it moist, hold everything in place and give the critters the dark they prefer.
Some gardeners have used this system right on top of lawn when they want to create a new bed. Just layer the materials in the shape you want and let nature do its thing. The lawn between the beds becomes compacted from being walked on. You should never walk on the beds, so don't make them any bigger than you can easily reach across.
For more information on no-till gardening, visit www.extension.oregonstate.edu or the Garden Web forum on soils (www.gardenweb.com) and check the FAQs for Interbay Mulch. If you do a Google search for "no till garden," you will find many links to more information.