My Lasagna Garden

In the Arizona Desert with all of the caliche (not sure of the spelling) but it makes the ground really hard like cement with very little organic matter in it. And all of the clay like soil, and the heat, and the scorpions and the ants, and the cochroaches, and the heat, and the sun and the heat... You get the picture?

Actually it can be very beautiful down here. As proof, if you go to my other blog site you will get to see some of the beauties of Arizona and I also love the sun! http://siouxzbellesart.blogspot.com/


I missed my big green productive garden in Lehi and so instead of crying over something I didn't have any control over, (not to say that I haven't cried over things I have no control over) but I decided that store-bought vegetables had no taste and were blaaaahhh! I also miss the green, and so artist that I am, I decided to bring a little green into my world by planting a garden. It is called a Lasagna garden.

I wanted to keep my garden enclosed and so I put a plea over the ward internet for anyone who had used blocks who could donate to me. A very kind and generous man gave me some wonderful cinder blocks which you can see in this picture. This first picture shows the walls around what will be our garden.

We first covered the ground with cardboard to keep weeds from growing up in our garden and to keep it moist, then our first layer was old hay and then we started layering it with compost, mulch, grass clippings, old leaves, cow manure, peat moss, and just kept layering it until it was about 14 inches deep.



Here you see the hay and some compost as the first few layers. After it is filled, you can plant that very same day if you want to. I think I planted the next morning.

Here you can see my plants growing after only a week or two. We had such a gorgeous spring and these plants just popped out of the ground. I have an automatic watering system in it so I don't have to weed or water. Just enjoy the fruits of my labor.

But... there are critters down here. The critter that I am referring to is a feral (wild)cat. It decided that our garden plot was a perfect glorified litter box and took the opportunity to leave its little presents there each morning. At first I thought that it was birds because my bean sprouts were getting ripped out of the ground. In Lehi, the robins loved the baby sprouts and would scratch them out of the ground and eat them.

But lo and behold, I found the cats droppings and realized that it was a cat. I didn't want it to get too accustomed to my garden and ruin all my hard work with its poop! I thought hard of what I could do to get rid of it and the thought came that I could put cayenne pepper on the ground. Why not? I thought, I had a quart of cayenne and so that is the red powder looking stuff you see in this picture above. Guess what? Cayenne works! The next day, the cat tried to use my garden plot again in two places but never got to.. It got some hot paws or whatever. (We won't go there!) And so, my garden has been cat poop free and growing like a weed, with no weeds! Yahoo!

This is about 6-7 weeks after I planted my garden. From left to right we have cantalope and watermelon which will trail off of the edge and vine out onto the open ground. We have a row of colored swiss chard and kohlrabi a row of cylindra beets, a row of tomatoes. (I call them, mater (the biggest one) tater (next biggest) and toe (which is the cherry tomatoe). Then we have a row of beans and a half row of cucumbers which will trail off onto the rocks below and 2 crook neck summer squash.

As of today, we have been eating chard and beet greens. My beans have baby beans on them about 1 inch long, cucumbers have baby cucumbers, my squash is about 4 inches long with lots of squash and flowers galore on the cantalopes and watermelons. I have eaten one ripe tomatoe about 2 weeks ago and the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. I am so excited about my garden! Thanks for sharing it with me. I will post more pictures when I start to harvest more.