Homemade Dirt

Planted some seeds today – some in plastic pots and some in the side door raised bed garden (SDG) which I just built. I’m using the same frame which I used for the lasagna garden in the back – and the same dirt too – I carted over about ten wheel barrows full.  Here's a photo of the new garden at left.

I suppose it is kind of weird to have a vegetable garden right up against the wall of the house but this is only a temporary measure for this season so I can redesign the backyard and optimize it for gardening.  And hopefully also build a deck off the back for outdoor dining, cooking, relaxing, etc.  Below left: south exposure before laying the wood frame. Below right: the wood frame before adding the homemade dirt.

A lasagna garden is a raised bed garden which is also an automatic composting machine because you fill it with the same stuff you would throw into your compost pile. Nice! It composts under there while your plants grow. You need a frame of some kind as it is above ground level.  In my case it was the frame from a yoga platform Bobby built balanced on top of three layers of brick. Not so sturdy but held up well for one season. It was less than 24 inches high which I would have thought wouldn't be high enough, but it ended up working just fine.

It’s called lasagna gardening because it is about layering (no noodles involved). At the bottom you first lay a cardboard barrier to prevent weeds from growing for a while. Then you add organic trash: fallen leaves, vegetable scraps from the kitchen, egg shells, grass cuttings, dead plants, etc. Middle layer is mid or rough compost - the same things as in the bottom layer but already about halfway decomposed/compostsed. Photo at left and below are of the beautiful dirt in the already decimated lasagna garden.

The top layer is topsoil and/or backyard dirt so you can plant your seeds or seedlings.

In the one season I used it I planted tomatoes, lemongrass, basil, carrots, chives I was successful with pretty much everything. Everything is already gone except for the chives and the lemongrass which appears to be dead. So I decided to use this dirt for the new garden on the south side of the house while the backyard is demo-ed.

The amazing thing is that when I dug it up and moved the dirt the other day I found that ALL the pre-compost organic trash has already transformed into hummus. The cardboard barrier had also completely decomposed. So I had many cubic feet of free, organic, nutrient-laden, earthworm-laden premium dirt! Black gold as they call it. Making soil is an amazing thing. It feels like you are making air or water or something. Below is a photo of the chives I transplanted out of the lasagna garden.

By the way this is what I planted today:

Brand Veg Type                       ORG DTG DTH
FM Long Bean Zi 28-2                   N 6-8 50 pots
FM Snow Peas Melting Sugar        N 8-12 72 Pots – need to trellis
FM Basil Sweet                             Y 5-10 - SDG (2)
FM Zucchini Black Beauty             Y 7-10 63 SDG (1)
FM Pak Choi BonsaiHybrid           N 10-14 40-45 SDG (6)

The zuke, basil and pak choi went into the new garden (the rest in pots) so I’ll see in the next few days/weeks how valuable my black gold really is….