Last year we didn't have much of a garden, but over the winter Aaron and I did some reading and planning.
In late February I started planting seeds, this was my first batch. I planted more and more throughout March and April...and nurtured them alot... they were needy little seedlings.
This year we decided to use raised beds, since our previous attempts at no til were kind of a mess/failure.
So we designed some beds, bought some fir, and Aaron got to work setting up our "no till/permaculture/lasagna gardening/no dig/sheet mulching/whatever you wanna call it" raised beds. It's called so many different things and there's alot of variations. The idea we're working on here is creating some natural balance, not digging up and disturbing the soil, using the compost to keep the weeds down and feed the plants.
In early April we set up the beds right over the grass,and put cardboard around any of the perennials (hopefully killing the very invasive oregano and peppermint that had taken over), and layered it on top of the grass in the other beds.
Going around the sage and lavender.
Next came the layers of wet newspaper, going around the egyptian onions.
On top of that went some sawdust and then some composted goat manure that we got for next to nothing.
then lots of old, bad hay (hoping all the seeds are dead at this point), which was also dirt cheap.
Then a layer of grass clippings from our lawn. (We haven't used pesticides or fertilizers other than chicken manure in over 2 years on our lawn, so the clippings are safe to use) That's pretty much it, there's no set group of materials to use. The idea is to use what you have/can find. the only guideline we've been following is to layer "brown" (carbon) and "green" (nitrogen) materials at about a 3:1 ratio. If you're interested here's a
list of what's brown and what's green.
I pushed aside the top layer of hay/grass and planted my seedlings directly into the hole I made, along with some compost, then tucked it in.
Seedlings hardening off outside.
