To say that our lives have been "interesting" lately would be an understatement......but the garden is doing well. the only real trouble has been bugs. One of our potato plants has died, and we've had a bit of a war with horn worms on the tomato plants. Some of our bean plants are doing well, but bugs have gotten others. We broke down and bought some Sevin(dust on plants and it keeps the bugs away). I must say it works  very well. We have been eating lettuce, kohlrabi, and turnips.

It's been a while, Garden Update

We have been pretty busy lately. Here is an update on our garden:

I would say that our lasagna garden has worked out very well so far. When weeds show up, pulling them is simple. We have been eating the lettuce, spinach, and turnips.
Our initially planted peas, carrots, and onions did not come up(we replanted with  sets and they are doing better). Our first batch of beans were eaten by bugs, so we replanted and now we are putting powder on them to protect them. My sweet corn is doing well.

Stormy Weather

We had some pretty heavy rain and hail this weekend. I think we may need to replant some of our garden, because the smaller seeds can wash down too deep into the Lasagna. We want to be sure we have plants growing,  even if we end up having to pull or move some good plants later.

By the way I have started a new Facebook Community called Beyond Organic Nebraska. Come join the community and share any ideas or what you are doing to promote health-building foods.
here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/BeyondOrganicNebraska

That is all  for now!
Kurt

More planting.

Not much to report this week. Angie and the kids transplanted some rhubarb and strawberries into the garden, and I transplanted 4 of our Rose bushes (they were at our rental residence) to our flower garden(its not lasagna). I hope the roses are OK, they did not look very happy with me :). I also planted 3 heritage raspberry bushes. I love raspberries, so I hope they do well.
Kurt

We started planting!

Saturday we started planting! Caleb and I got one last load of compost and after that we were ready to plant. It was super easy to plant in the soft layers. The lasagna gardening experience has been great so far.

Angie did some reading from Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and mapped out our boxes for each group of plants. We uses the handle of the hoe to make a grid to space things accordingly. Here Hannah and Angie are planting peas.

It is very interesting to see what each plant seed looks like. Some, like carrot seeds are really tiny, others are bigger than you would expect. Here are our pea seeds.

 Natalie is planting potatoes, we dug a hole clear down to the bottom, and dropped in the potato.

 Levi was a big helper!

Almost ready for planting!

This weekend we added two more layers: crushed leaves(thank you Collins family), and compost from the City of Lincoln. We need to get one more load of compost, and we will be ready for planting!

Jackson enjoyed the leaves.

Our mower has a mulching blade on it, so we used it to chop up our leaves.

 

The compost from the City of Lincoln was great. 

Hannah is a hard worker, she is really into it.

We ran out of compost before we could get the last two boxes filled, so Ill get another load next weekend.

Progress report

Levi loves the tractor.

  This week we finished the boxes. It was fun to use wood salvaged from Angie's Great Grandparents' barn. Angie's Great Grandpa was a  very good farmer and I'm sure he would enjoy seeing his barn wood put to good use.

Saturday we got a load of horse manure from a local stable . Contact us if you need horse manure and we will  get you connected. 

We laid down the first few layers. First was cardboard. This is to keep the weeds from growing up into our lasagna. 

We need to alternate between "green" and "brown" materials as we layer the garden. First comes a few inches of our horse manure. 

We decided to cut some of the grass that was left from last year to use as a "brown" layer. The grass along our fence was nice and dry, and full of corn leaves from the field. I just cut down the  grass with either the weed eater or the tractor, and then we gathered it up and placed it on the garden. The biggest issue was the 30mph winds from the South! The kids were very good workers and we got the job done.

A bit of water helped keep the clippings from blowing away.

Next up was some compost that came from what used to be a pile of wood. 15+ years ago a storm came through and damaged a lot of trees on the property. The resulting wood pile sat basically undisturbed until our family moved in. We used the top of the pile for firewood, and found wonderful compost below.

Here is the site of the wood pile. Only a few pieces of solid wood remain. The rest is either gone, or crumbles in your hands.

That is where we called it a day. I can see how this is going to become a great way to garden, especially when we can build up our stockpile of materials. We plan on adding a few more layers and then we will be ready to plant!
-Kurt