New bed needed lasagna, sheet mulch, permaculture???

[zeroma]

I was reading several of the threads/posts here and have a specific question mostly for Redbaron and Scottinatlanta and those with clay soil knowledge.

I want a no till bed. I want it to be used asap. It is for our medical study garden at the Air Base.

I want to show (this is educational based garden) how no till works and is great for the soil.

It is now my project to complete.

The bed area will be sprayed with Roundup (though I wish that wouldn't be the case). It is going to be at least 4 feet wide, mostly likely wider, and 30 feet long. No timbers to make it a traditional raised bed.

What is the differences between lasagna gardening, sheet mulching and no till/permaculture?

I want the best of all three. We have straw to use, newspaper, compost, pine cones, (we have pH around 7.2), shreded paper, fresh veggies from the lettuce/radish/kale/etc, many other possible raw materials.

What steps would you use oh, and it has to look nice, not like the compost pile! The base commander runs past the garden every day. ; )

Oh, and what fertilizer? I'm going to buy worms and others may also.

Thanks so much.

[COMPOSTER]

First thing I would do is work to stop the Roundup application. If you have newspaper available and other materials to layer upon it and are going to plant the bed next year you do not need to use roundup at all. The newspaper will smother what is growing there as effective as the Roundup will kill it.

Glenn

[zeroma]

Oh, I forgot to mention: The lawn area where this bed is going used to be base housing. The houses were there for 30-50 years, there were streets, curbs, car parking etc. In other words, very compacted ground. And this area is also in a wetter area of the space, but should not be problematic as it will be raised. The ground in the area was tested for bad chemicals and is safe.

1. clay
2. compact
3. cement under the surface.

We want to build it up to show what can be done working with what you have.

[habitat_gardener]

The purpose of sheet mulching is to smother weeds so you don't have to go to the trouble of pulling them or disposing of them (unless they're rhizomatous perennials, which you do want to remove). It's basically a light-blocking layer of newspaper or cardboard covered by as much mulch as you have.

Lasagna gardening is an elaboration of sheet mulching, using layers of several types of materials on top of the light-blocking layer. The layers don't need to be uniform and don't need to follow a specific recipe, but in general each layer should be relatively thin.

In both methods, the topmost layer is for "show": it should be uniform and neat-looking, especially since this bed is in a high-profile area. Shredded wood chips make a nice top layer; all your other materials are a little too messy for a public area. Well, compost might be ok, if it's basic municipal compost (rather than some super premium homemade stuff, which I wouldn't waste as a top dressing). Straw is fine for veg gardens, but I'd be concerned about it blowing around, and even without wind, it tends to migrate onto paths. Also make sure no bits of newspaper or cardboard are poking out. Worms love coffee grounds, which are available free at Starbucks and other coffee shops.

Permaculture/no-till encompasses a lot of techniques, including sheet mulching and lasagna gardening.

Mulching is the easiest way to make clay soil workable. I'd also plant some deep-rooted crops to work the clay -- grasses/grains, comfrey, daikon, etc.

Is this a veg garden or an herb garden?

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by zeroma

I was reading several of the threads/posts here and have a specific question mostly for Redbaron and Scottinatlanta and those with clay soil knowledge.

I want a no till bed. I want it to be used asap. It is for our medical study garden at the Air Base.

I want to show (this is educational based garden) how no till works and is great for the soil.

It is now my project to complete.

The bed area will be sprayed with Roundup (though I wish that wouldn't be the case). It is going to be at least 4 feet wide, mostly likely wider, and 30 feet long. No timbers to make it a traditional raised bed.

What is the differences between lasagna gardening, sheet mulching and no till/permaculture?

I want the best of all three. We have straw to use, newspaper, compost, pine cones, (we have pH around 7.2), shreded paper, fresh veggies from the lettuce/radish/kale/etc, many other possible raw materials.

What steps would you use oh, and it has to look nice, not like the compost pile! The base commander runs past the garden every day. ; )

Oh, and what fertilizer? I'm going to buy worms and others may also.

Thanks so much.

ASAP? Well don't expect perfect then. Most organic techniques take time to see the full effect, usually require soil testing, and require someone with a bit of experience and understanding of what's going on from a broad "holistic" view. Even then you generally don't see dramatic benefits until 3-5 years down the road. The good news is that worms are smarter and more experienced at gardening than humans, with millions of years of proven success stories under the harshest conditions Mother Nature could throw at them!. With-in the constrictions you placed, I will try to answer your questions and devise a plan for you.

What is the differences between lasagna gardening, sheet mulching and no till/permaculture?

They are closely related with a lot of overlap. They are so closely related in fact that they all redirect to the same wikipage. Basically lasagna gardening uses several layers of sheet mulching combined with other materials that technically are not "mulch" per se. like soil, compost, worm castings, sand etc... Sheet mulching is possible with only a weed barrier and mulch over that but could optionally include layers. Permaculture/no-till could be applied to both but basically denotes the broader holistic sustainable organic systems viewpoint. So right off the bat since you are using Round-up as an initial burn down, it couldn't be considered "permaculture" or organic. Instead it would be considered "integrated". However, stay organic 3 years or more after, with minimal outside inputs, and then you can start considering it nominally permaculture. My guess is that since it is small and doesn't include a complete ecosystem, it will never be technically "permaculture". More likely it will be best done with a lot of outside organic inputs every year and better described as bio-intensive organic. In a true "permaculture" model, of the strictest sense, perennials - like for example trees dropping leaves in the fall - would provide future layers of mulch with minimal human intervention. Once you set up the whole cycle in permaculture, you pretty much leave it alone, with a few minor exceptions. I doubt that is what you are looking for here. Bio-intensive on the other hand includes lots of yearly inputs of one or more organic products like additional mulches, manures, compost, micro-organism inoculates etc.

What steps would you use, .... and what fertilizer? and it has to look nice, not like the compost pile! The base commander runs past the garden every day.

Start off with finding someone else with experience with Round-up to tell you how to use it. That is not my expertise. Wait whatever the recommended time is to start the plan I recommend.

Step 1) Mow the dead weeds and grass as low as possible to the ground.

Step 2) Feed your worms by scattering coffee grounds or cracked corn, rolled oats etc lightly over the surface. Not too much, just a little.

Step 3) With a garden fork, pitch fork, broad fork or similar tool pierce the ground and "wiggle" it to break up any hard pan. Do NOT dig it up and turn it over, just opening up channels for drainage and to allow the layers to eventually mix somewhat. This is optional but highly recommended if the clay is very heavy. Worms can do it, but giving them just a little head start helps tremendously. If this takes hours you are doing it wrong by doing too much.

Step 4) Scatter your worms and moisten the soil just enough to prevent them from dying. it will also make it easier to do step 5 if there is a little wetness on the surface to make the paper stick and not blow all over the place.

Step 5) Make a weed barrier with 6 layers +/- of sheets of newspaper overlapped a couple inches. I usually have a helper mist the paper on top as soon as I lay it down to help hold it in place until I get some compost or mulch on it to hold it down. Otherwise the wind can cause a real mess real quick!

Step 6) Throw on just enough of your straw mulch to keep the paper from blowing away and mist it to settle it.

Step 7) Use all your other materials in layers, however thick allowed by the quantities you have, saving the rest of the straw mulch to make a pretty and tidy looking last layer and water the whole thing. It should be at least 3-6 inches or more total. The more the better because it will reduce a lot throughout the season.

Step 8) I highly recommend the first year planting only seedlings. Starting from seed directly in the bed first year can sometimes be a bit tricky if you don't know what you are doing. Bulbs or sets can be used though. The secondary reason is that we want to keep the base commander happy! So get your plants and be sure to include a few flats of French Dwarf Marigolds already in bloom to scatter in between everything else and especially to make a nice pretty border.

Step 9) When you set your plants into the bed, be sure to have some nice good potting soil at the ready. Dig through the mulch clear through to the ground even past the weed barrier and make a kind of "nest" Set your seedling in the nest and fill with your extra good soil. Water and pull a thin top layer of straw mulch back over and around the seedlings. I use inoculated water and/or AACT at this step.

Step 10) Keep it moist until the seedlings have time to settle into their new environment.

Step 11) Fertilize as needed with one of the many organic water soluble ferts available on the market.

Hope that helps.

[zeroma]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

ASAP? Well don't expect perfect then. Most organic techniques take time to see the full effect, usually require soil testing, and require someone with a bit of experience and understanding of what's going on from a broad "holistic" view. Even then you generally don't see dramatic benefits until 3-5 years down the road. The good news is that worms are smarter and more experienced at gardening than humans, with millions of years of proven success stories under the harshest conditions Mother Nature could throw at them!. With-in the constrictions you placed, I will try to answer your questions and devise a plan for you.



They are closely related with a lot of overlap. They are so closely related in fact that they all redirect to the same wikipage. Basically lasagna gardening uses several layers of sheet mulching combined with other materials that technically are not "mulch" per se. like soil, compost, worm castings, sand etc... Sheet mulching is possible with only a weed barrier and mulch over that but could optionally include layers. Permaculture/no-till could be applied to both but basically denotes the broader holistic sustainable organic systems viewpoint. So right off the bat since you are using Round-up as an initial burn down, it couldn't be considered "permaculture" or organic. Instead it would be considered "integrated". However, stay organic 3 years or more after, with minimal outside inputs, and then you can start considering it nominally permaculture. My guess is that since it is small and doesn't include a complete ecosystem, it will never be technically "permaculture". More likely it will be best done with a lot of outside organic inputs every year and better described as bio-intensive organic. In a true "permaculture" model, of the strictest sense, perennials - like for example trees dropping leaves in the fall - would provide future layers of mulch with minimal human intervention. Once you set up the whole cycle in permaculture, you pretty much leave it alone, with a few minor exceptions. I doubt that is what you are looking for here. Bio-intensive on the other hand includes lots of yearly inputs of one or more organic products like additional mulches, manures, compost, micro-organism inoculates et al.



Start off with finding someone else with experience with Round-up to tell you how to use it. That is not my expertise. Wait whatever the recommended time is to start the plan I recommend.

Step 1) Mow the dead weeds and grass as low as possible to the ground.

Step 2) Feed your worms by scattering coffee grounds or cracked corn, rolled oats etc lightly over the surface. Not too much, just a little.

Step 3) With a garden fork, pitch fork, broad fork or similar tool pierce the ground and "wiggle" it to break up any hard pan. Do NOT dig it up and turn it over, just opening up channels for drainage and to allow the layers to eventually mix somewhat. This is optional but highly recommended if the clay is very heavy. worms can do it, but giving them just a little head start helps tremendously. If this takes hours you are doing it wrong by doing too much.

Step 4) Scatter your worms and moisten the soil just enough to prevent them from dying. it will also make it easier to do step 5 if there is a little wetness on the surface to make the paper stick and not blow all over the place.

Step 5) Make a weed barrier with 6 layers +/- of sheets of newspaper overlapped a couple inches. I usually have a helper mist the paper on top as soon as I lay it down to help hold it in place until I get some compost or mulch on it to hold it down. Otherwise the wind can cause a real mess real quick!

Step 6) Throw on just enough of your straw mulch to keep the paper from blowing away and mist it to settle it.

Step 7) Use all your other materials in layers, however thick allowed by the quantities you have, saving the rest of the straw mulch to make a pretty and tidy looking last layer and water the whole thing. It should be at least 3-6 inches or more total. The more the better because it will reduce a lot throughout the season.

Step 8) I highly recommend the first year planting only seedlings. Starting from seed first year can sometimes be a bit tricky if you don't know what you are doing. Bulbs or sets can be used though. The secondary reason is that we want to keep the base commander happy! So get your plants and be sure to include a few flats of Marigolds already in bloom to scatter in between everything else and especially to make a nice pretty border.

Step 9) When you set your plants into the bed, be sure to have some nice good potting soil at the ready. Dig through the mulch clear through to the ground even past the weed barrier and make a kind of "nest" Set your seedlings in the nest and fill with your extra good soil. Water and pull a thin top layer of straw mulch back over and around the seedlings. I use inoculated water and/or AACT at this step.

Step 10) Keep it moist until the seedlings have time to settle into their new environment.

Step 11) Fertilize as needed with one of the many organic water soluble ferts available on the market.

Hope that helps.

[zeroma]

Composter, I'll try tonight when we meet at the garden for a work session.

habitat gardener, thanks for the explanations. I had a good idea of what each was and really want to make this VEGETABLE BED a wonderful, loving home for the veggies to go up in.

We have tons of wood chips, some pretty called playground mulch and then regular wood chips ground up from ash trees that had to be felled on base.

I looked up cover crops as was suggested and Lupines are listed in one of the sites I checked out. How cool that would be for the one for next year. It is most likely too late in the season for starting them now, but I'm looking into that as a choice. Alfalfa is maybe a more conventional route???? daikon too.

[Master_Gardener]

Originally Posted by zeroma

...

I looked up cover crops as was suggested and Lupines are listed in one of the sites I checked out. How cool that would be for the one for next year. It is most likely too late in the season for starting them now, but I'm looking into that as a choice. Alfalfa is maybe a more conventional route???? daikon too.

I planted some inoculated Lupines in my new never tilled garden. They didn't grow very large. They are also perennial, but so it most alfalfa. My plan is to grow inoculated legumes as my first cover crop, then grow inoculated non-dormant alfalfa after the legumes go to seed and let winter kill it. At least that is the theory.

I also planted Daikon Radishes as well. They also are small and they could benefit from some sort of support. They like to fall over a lot. The small size is due to the fact that they were planted a few weeks after the bed was laid down. I got them to dig in my hard clay soil. Well, the clay is winning so far but I have hopes down the road.

The crop that did the best was the one I gave the least attention to, lentils. I planted them just because and they were more pest and disease resistant than Cowpeas, Black Beans, Pinto Beans and Soy Beans. That may just mean that my critters like to eat the others more. (grin) They have flowered but not gone to seed yet.

I went to the grocery store and bought 1 lb bags of various legumes for about $2 each. I got 100% germination on my test so I made them my cover crops. I don't care what variety they are since they are compost crops. I have enough seed left over for a few years. I will repeat this process again next year before I spend time and money trying to plant something to obtain a yield.

Russel

[ScottinAtlanta]

Zeroma, I just saw this thread, and saw you asked my advice. Redbaron is the expert here, not me, so I defer to him. My experience with lasagna gardening is that you should have a very large fraction of organics to soil (90%-10%). That is, if you layer 9 inches of organics such as compost, you should have only one inch of clay soil. I did half and half in my first attempt, and that turned into the archaelogical layers, in which clay soil layers were separated by tiny strips of dark organic material compressed into layers a millimeter thick. A little clay goes a long way.

[kath]

PM sent, zeroma.

kath

[zeroma]

Good infor once again guys/gals. I was told that oats make one of the best cover crops here by one of the garden leaders. So oats it will be this year. Lupines don't grow well here if at all, but they sure enough would have been beautiful.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by zeroma

Good infor once again guys/gals. I was told that oats make one of the best cover crops here by one of the garden leaders. So oats it will be this year. Lupines don't grow well here if at all, but they sure enough would have been beautiful.

Oats is fine, but recommend a legume to blend it with.

[Master_Gardener]

I struggled with the Organic Material vs Organic Matter when I first started gardening. People say, add organic matter, but what is it exactly?

Going forward, could we make a distinction between Organic Matter (finished compost) (OM) and raw Organic Material (Om) like leaves? The reason is that it takes a huge amount of Om to become OM. It means something quite different to me when I read six inches of Om vs. OM.

Om is little more than mulch when it is first applied. It may not even be good for the soil for a couple weeks. OM can theoretically be utilized right away and can also be easily incorporated into the soil.

One reason why OM is such a big deal is that unlike soil, OM can hold both Cations and Anions for you CEC fans. Yea OM!

I put 24 inches of Om (leaves) on my garden last fall which became about 1 inch of OM by spring. At the same rate of conversion, I would need to add 12 feet of Om to equal 6 inches of OM.

While harder to measure, OM also includes includes "roots in the ground." That is another way to increase OM in your soil. It is one of the best ways for us no-till guys.

There are other differences, but the idea is to convey what kind of material is being used in case we want to play along at home.

Russel

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Master_Gardener

I struggled with the Organic Material vs Organic Matter when I first started gardening. People say, add organic matter, but what is it exactly?

Going forward, could we make a distinction between Organic Matter (finished compost) (OM) and raw Organic Material (Om) like leaves? The reason is that it takes a huge amount of Om to become OM. It means something quite different to me when I read six inches of Om vs. OM.

Om is little more than mulch when it is first applied. It may not even be good for the soil for a couple weeks. OM can theoretically be utilized right away and can also be easily incorporated into the soil.

One reason why OM is such a big deal is that unlike soil, OM can hold both Cations and Anions for you CEC fans. Yea OM!

I put 24 inches of Om (leaves) on my garden last fall which became about 1 inch of OM by spring. At the same rate of conversion, I would need to add 12 feet of Om to equal 6 inches of OM.

While harder to measure, OM also includes includes "roots in the ground." That is another way to increase OM in your soil. It is one of the best ways for us no-till guys.

There are other differences, but the idea is to convey what kind of material is being used in case we want to play along at home.

Russel

Well stated. And just to make it even more complicated. There is humus, which is organic matter that can break down no further by biological processes and at that point considered sequestered carbon. That generally takes ~ 5 years +/-.

In nature there is no exact line dividing each phase, but for general purposes of categorization for us to understand it goes like this: Raw material, which includes any organic life needing decomposition; composted organic material, which has been reduced by decay to the point it is in simpler forms usable by our plants; humus, which can no longer decay and is not directly used by our crops, but is crucial in constructing a healthy environment in the soil for all the other life to function at high efficiency.

In the end, it is the humus that makes organic systems work and even surpass all other forms of high input chemical agriculture. (with the possible exception of hydroponics which don't use soil at all). That always takes time. There simply isn't a way to bypass it. Even adding humus directly doesn't work instantly because it is the whole cycle that is important. Not only do all the components have to be present, they have to reach a balance. There are delicate balances and deeply nuanced interdependencies that cannot easily be appreciated using a purely reductionist or categorical approach.

[zeroma]

"Sequestered carbon".... just struck me in the heart. LOL just the word sequester leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of us who are military...DoD related in someway.

Scott and Russel, well stated. Much appreciated and I get it. I recently finished reading the book, "Teaming with Microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels and wayne Lewis. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to understand the "Soil Food Web", the science behind organic gardening.