A Little Gardening Experiment
I have already started planting this years garden (actually, I’m a little late on some things). But, I had so much fun last year, that I am expanding my garden this year. I’m also doing things a little differently this year in that I am not using a rototiller on this years expansion. I have read a lot of articles on "no till" gardening and composting right in your garden so I thought I would combine the two.Let me explain.
A good friend of mine has a yard full of maple trees. Last fall, when he was raking all of his leaves, I invited him to dump them all in my yard. First, I laid newspaper right on the lawn and then covered the newspaper with about 8 inches of leaves and left them there. Fast forward to this spring.
Up here in Maine, it seems like as soon as we put the snowblower away for the season, it’s time to get out the lawnmower. I have mowed my lawn twice so far this spring (well, whats left of it as gardening does cut down on the lawn size). I used the bagger on my lawn mower. Next, I put newspaper over the leaves and covered the newspaper with the grass clippings.
This addition to my garden is for “hill” or “mound” vegetables, namely cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini. In the next week or so I will be able to safely plant these. I am going to make my hills for these vegetables right on top of the grass clippings. The grass clippings will keep the weeds down between the hills.
I will be taking pictures and updating on this site so that you can follow along and see how my experiment works out.
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Comment by Rob on June 8, 2009 at 12:04pm - Thanks for the much appreciated feedback. Cynthia, I still consider myself a novice at this, but I bought bags of the all natural top soil at Wal Mart for about $1.25 a bag. One bag per hill. I also mixed in some compost.
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Comment by Gillian on May 11, 2009 at 4:44pm - That sounds like a great idea Rob, I made my vegetable garden by marking off an area with cinderblocks and wooden board and then filled it with layers of stuff, ending with a thick layer of well rotted mulch. I didnt dig the grass up at all - just put newspaper and carboard down for the first layer. It is very well draining and I found that I needed to plant the vegetables in a pocket of potting soil just to get them started. Now they are doing great - and no weeds - hooray! the grass has not come through either.
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Comment by Cynthia on May 11, 2009 at 2:12pm - I love the no-till methods. How are you going to make your squash and cuke hills? I have an area of my garden that I can't see from the house that got overgrown last summer, as it does almost every summer, by quack grass. It's overwhelming and pretty much futile to pull out quack grass, so here's my plan: I'm going to solarize it this summer by laying down black plastic (over a layer of newspaper, to tempt the worms to do their stuff there) and then laying cardboard over the top. I'll grow pumpkin and let them vine around on the cardboard while the soil below cooks the quack grass and (I hope!) kills it over the next 12 months. Anybody think this will work? Suggestions welcome!
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