It is that time of year- getting prepared to put in our garden! There is nothing more exciting than the hopefulness of gardening. This year, we decided to expand our garden. However, I didn't want to dig anymore than I was already going to have to for our patio. I began seeking an easier answer online and discovered lasagna gardening! The most common method is to put down a layer of cardboard or newspaper (wet it) and cover with alternative layers of browns (leaves, paper, etc) and greens (vegetable/fruit waste, egg shells, etc) and then let is compost over the winter. Well since winter was already past and I didn't want to wait until next year, I put down six inches of finished soil over the cardboard. While my method is more expensive and required me hauling a lot of bags of topsoil, peat moss, perlite, etc it did give me an "insta-garden" without digging! Getting all that cardboard was another story..... First I raided our office cardboard recycling bin but that barely made a dent in what I needed. Then I got the idea to go to a local wholesale club to the free box bin. I spent over an hour there breaking down boxes and got stopped twice by employees wondering what in the world I was doing but when I was done I had an entire grocery cart filled with flat sheets of cardboard. I laid it all out and had to laugh since all the boxes were for food products, I had what looked like a big billboard of grocery store ads! We had everything from Spam to Snickers boxes! I wish I had remembered to take a picture but in my exhaustion I totally forgot. Our final garden is now 30 ft by 20 ft and last year it was 10 ft by 12ft!
