Lasagna in the Vegetable Garden

After neglecting my vegetable garden for a year I revitalized the area using lasagna gardening methods. It is a bit late in the season for summer vegetables (going to be 104 F this week in my area), but I’m going to try a few things before fall vegetable gardening starts.

A couple of weekends ago cleaned the sludge out of the koi pond and placed it on top of the weedy vegetable garden. I added a layer of peat moss and covered it with heavy plastic tarps.

After a week of stewing, I was pleasantly surprised that most of the weeds were dead. The remainders got weed-wacked.

A thick layer of cardboard and newpaper went down next.

My husband provided me with their accounting department’s bagged shreddings that were destined for the trash. That layer went down next.

I then brought in bags of composted cow manure, composted humus, and a garden bed mix spread. I plan to do an organic vegetable garden, so the garden mix was only different textures of soil (sand, bark, etc) without any added fertilizers. Once I mixed and spread the soil I began to lay down soaker hose. My dachshund, Chloe, is my constant gardening companion loved the fresh dirt.

I planted directly into the top layer of soil: fresh herbs (bee balm, bell pepper flavored basil, and globe basil), 2 types of peppers (green bell, hot yellow gold), dent corn, lemon cucumber, climbing spinach, assorted salad greens, fenugreek, okra, zucchini, and some winter squash. Pie pumpkin seeds will be added this weekend.

Although many of these vegetables aren’t for mid-summer crops in central Texas, I’m anxious to see what may still grow before it is time to plant the fall vegetables starting in late July/Early August. The bed is in partial shade, so some of crops may survive the near record heat and drought (27 days without measurable rain – and counting). The bed was finished off with about 3-4″ of shreaded cypress mulch.

After a full evening of gardening my feet were a little ragged.

Tagged as: Gardening, vegetable