apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A co-worker told me recently that she's doing this - she called it "Lasagne Gardening"

I replied, "Oh - So you're growing tomoatoes, zucchini and eggplant?"

Umm...excuse me; lucerne is the same thing as alfalfa.

If you try this using hay, be very, very sure to pile on the remaining "ingredients" and do it thick to keep the sunlight and warmth from germinating those grain seeds. We made the mistake of mulching one year with a leftover alfalfa bale instead of going to pick up a straw bale and we pulled up volunteer grass for months afterwards.

That looks like a giant bale of ditch weed.

Maybe that's why the worker's identity is hidden.

Could this be used as another rooftop gardening method?

I actually have a book by Patricia Lanza called, "Lasagna Gardening". It was printed in 1998 from the publishers of Organic Gardening magazine. It is a really neat book since it tells you step by step how to do it and all the different materials you can use for your layers. I just got the book for Mother's Day, so my lasagna garden this year is pretty small (in addition to my regular garden area), but it was so easy to plant stuff in and there are no weeds at all. I can not say the same for my regular garden! I planted radishes, beets, tomatoes, and squash in the lasagna garden.

I forgot to add that when I laid down wet newspaper to kill all the grass, it almost completely decomposed and attracted hundred of wiggly red worms. My other garden has few worms. Apparently, the worms love the paper and will migrate towards it. Just like in a vermicomposting bin, I guess.