Slowly a garden rises from the ground.
It is a known fact that lasagna in Greek literally translates to layers of delicious goodness. While this may not actually be true, I’m sure many would agree that this should have been the case when instead the Romans borrowed the Greek word “lasanon”, using it to refer to the cooking pot in which lasgana was made. But the revolutionary theory of the delicious goodness of layers can be applied to more than this Italian pasta dish. The garden is just as good a place as anywhere to apply this theory—so with a few buckets of manure, a dash of newspaper, and sprinkling of mulch you can consider the theory applied.
Lasgana beds are perfect for gardeners who prefer not to use power-tools and may not be able to spare huge amounts of time weeding, rototilling, or digging. The layer of newspaper (or cardboard if preferred) works as a weed block. Because of the layer technique, rototilling would ruin the layers we worked so hard to create—and lasagna is only as good as it’s layers—so naturally rototilling is not needed. This technique is also perfect if time is an issue. We needed a bed quickly and were able to transplant some chard, broccoli and lettuce in about a week. To create our lasgana bed, we loosened up the ground where our bed was to go. First we spread out a thin layer of newspaper; on top of that went manure (of the chicken and goat variety); then a good layer of mulch—which were old grass clippings and straw. We let this cook for about seven days before we transplanted our seedlings. As manure can get pretty hot out in the sun, we had to make sure a good spreading of mulch was on the top layer after transplanting in order to protect the stems from getting burned.
It has been almost a week since the theory of the delicious goodness of layers has been applied in our garden and so far it is a success! The lettuce and broccoli have doubled in size and the chard has begun to flaunt broad new leaves. Our lasgana bed is looking as delicious as the Italians originally intended layers to look.
City Secret 