garden stories

You get to hear a lot about me, our farm and our garden here every day, but I know so many of you are doing fantastic things at home, in your own gardens, and I would really love to hear about it. There are so many great ideas floating around and I’ll never be able to read all the books fast enough to learn everything, so I’d love for you to tell us about your experiments.

If you’d like me to feature your garden, whether it’s an oasis or just getting started, just send me an email at tiffany@noordinaryhomestead, or leave a comment below.


My mom, an avid reader of this blog ;), has a homestead in Texas and most of the topsoil around her house was stripped away long before she moved in. So it’s been a challenge to get a garden going when the ground holds no moisture and the hot Texas sun beats down on everything all day.

Here’s what she done in a patch next to her house:

Seth helped me put in a “lasagna garden” which layers sand, mulch, dirt, manure etc.  I made a frame and put down heavy cardboard in the bottom.  That has been the absolute best thing I’ve ever done in my flower beds and garden.

lasagna garden

It keeps ALL weeds out and it is biodegradable.  I put down cardboard last fall and then put leaves (from my Craigs List wanted ad) and am so pleased with the results this spring.  It costs NOTHING to get the boxes from the grocer or even a furniture dealer with the big boxes.

You can also put carboard on the top and then put mulch over it.  I even used it under the brick pathways…simply marvelous.

lasagna garden

I’ve been slowly reading Gaia’s Garden on home-scale permaculture (I’ll get into that enormous topic later) and had just read about this exact same method a few days before my mom said she’d tried it out. Lasagna gardening is also known as sheet mulching and it is not only incredibly easy, but it will make an unmanageable, weed-infested garden into a growing oasis in a very short amount of time.

A lasagna garden is often 18-24 inches deep which requires quite a bit of compost, lawn clippings, shredded paper, leaves and other materials to complete the process. Don’t start with an area too large unless you have enough mulch and compost to spread around.

First you’ll want to mow down or trim the weeds growing, but don’t worry about taking the clippings away. They’ll break down under the pile of cardboard and mulch you’ll be piling on.

Lasagna gardens get their name because they are layered.

  • The first layer is cardboard or several sheets of newspaper. Water this down to help it stay in place and to help the breakdown process get started.
  • 2x “Browns” — dried leaves, pine needles, shredded newspaper, etc)
  • 1x “Greens” — vegetable scraps, tea bags or coffee grounds, garden trimmings, grass clippings
  • 2x “Browns”
  • 1x “Greens”
  • repeat “Browns” and “Greens” layers until you’ve got a bed several feet deep…or you run out of stuff to layer with

Generally, the “Browns” layers should be twice as thick as the “Greens”, but don’t obsess about it being perfect. Gardens are forgiving and your bed is still going to thrive after this treatment. And although it seems like an insane amount of material to put on the bed, it will break down fairly quickly.

If you’re doing this process in the fall, you’re finished for the season and can just let this bed mulch together on its own while you shop for vegetable and herb seeds. In the spring, you will have beautiful rich soil ready for planting. But if you’re just getting around to this idea in the spring, you can top the lasagna garden off with a layer of topsoil for your plants to take root in. The materials underneath will continue to break down on their own and fertilize the plants as they grow.

Not only is lasagna gardening easy, but it also cuts down on the number of weeds you have…and makes getting rid of new weeds easier because the soil is so loose and rich. Well mulched soil also holds more water in it.

Have you ever tried a method like this in your own garden?