Will This Lasagna Recipe "Work"?

Check it out. What will happen to the seeds and pansy plant planted in the "lasagna garden" during the Southeast Alaska State Fair, July 25th? What will happen to the beds themselves? Will the 30-inch high beds de-compose significantly? When will the layers settle into 6-8 inches of workable soil as advertised?

Leanne Converse and I, two newly minted Alaskan Master Gardeners, constructed a 12 x 60 x 30 inch high lasagna bed in the Community Garden during the Southeast Alaska State Fair last Friday. Keeping our materials wet was easy. It rained. A lot.

We started "traditionally" with a 2-3 inch layer of cardboard and newspaper, soaked over night. Then we covered that that with a 2-inch layer of forest soil and peat moss. After that, we added a twist. We made stew: two batches - a huge carbon stew and another huge nitrogen stew. The carbon stew consisted of equal parts (by volume) of seaweed, leaves, straw, and shredded paper. The nitrogen stew was equal parts coffee grounds, kitchen scraps including egg shells, and grass clippings. So, our beds are layered as follows: carbon stew, soil/peat mixture, nitrogen stew, soil/peat mixture - repeated, ending with a carbon stew covered with a soil/peat mix.

Most "lasagna garden" instructions do recommend that you use a variety of nitrogen and carbon ingredients, but generally this is understood to be separate layers of different nitrogen mediums and separate layers of different carbon mediums. For example, you might have seaweed, soil, grass clippings, soil, straw, kitchen scraps, soil, and so on.

Will our "stew" approach make any difference - positive or negative? Belatedly, the Juneau agent for the Cooperative Extension Service, Darren Snyder, gently pointed out that it is going to be hard to tell since we did not build a "control" bed in the more typical fashion. Although I have thriving lasagna beds at home, built earlier this summer using single layers of each carbon or nitrogen rich element, they are not comparable to the bed Leanne and I built at the Fair given the differences in size, location, date of inception, and materials. If I were still teaching, I think I would propose a year long science project, setting up systematically varied beds this fall on the school grounds.

There are other questions too. For example, should a lasagna garden end with a soil covered nitrogen layer, or a soil covered carbon layer? We ended with a soil covered carbon layer, thinking that a nitrogen layer might grow too "hot," thus inhibiting the growth of the seeds or burning the roots of the plant. Leanne has a compost thermometer and plans to take the bed's temperature occasionally.

Try to stop by and check it out. Make some observations. Oh, and by the way, if you see some escaped shredded paper, please forgive us. That stuff is hard to control!