Lasagna gardening is how I do things, just pile up chicken manures, coffee grounds from Starbucks and shredded oak leaves, come spring the worms have tilled it enough to grow veggie seedlings.

Yes, that works, but we have a huge garden remember? We were doing market gardening so our rows are 3 1/2 feet wide by 50 feet long and there are 40 of them. I do treat some of that rows that way. And we do have a broad fork. If you get one you will love it.

I I kind of did the lasagna gardening for my new bed out front. I layered cardboard thick straw and composted manure and planted right through that. So far, everything is thriving.

abhege said:Yes, that works, but we have a huge garden remember? We were doing market gardening so our rows are 3 1/2 feet wide by 50 feet long and there are 40 of them.

Good point, Arlene!

I have piles ground mulch and leaves on pretty much all my beds avoiding things like my peonies that don't need or like it close to the stems. I wasn't sure what I would do next spring as the stuff doesn't break down over winter. It just freezes in place. Freezing must do something to the physical composition to maybe hasten its breakdown in spring. But I was glad to read that perhaps I could just pull back the leaves and plant then replace them. Would help with keeping weeds down along with Preen. And for some reason I had never thought of putting grass clippings along paths and between plants for the same purpose. Duh. Pretty slow huh. I have read about it here for years. What does it do to the soil. I mean, grass is green (brilliant, huh?) so is high nitrogen. After a while doesn't it over power the soil. We need the carbon also. Granted the plants will slurp up the nitrogen but then won't you end up with greenery at the cost of fruits/vegies or flowers?

Oberon46 said:. What does it do to the soil. I mean, grass is green (brilliant, huh?) so is high nitrogen. After a while doesn't it over power the soil. We need the carbon also. Granted the plants will slurp up the nitrogen but then won't you end up with greenery at the cost of fruits/vegies or flowers?

Some straw, dead weeds, or (saved) leaves will balance it right out, Mary.


I've never tilled the gardens here, but they're relatively small areas. I just use a garden fork for deep weeding. I do till the horse stall now, and that makes for some really lovely compost... as well as an ammonia-free and sweet-smelling stall.

Oberon46 said:... And for some reason I had never thought of putting grass clippings along paths and between plants for the same purpose. Duh. Pretty slow huh. I have read about it here for years. What does it do to the soil. I mean, grass is green (brilliant, huh?) so is high nitrogen. After a while doesn't it over power the soil. We need the carbon also. Granted the plants will slurp up the nitrogen but then won't you end up with greenery at the cost of fruits/vegies or flowers?

Is it even possible to add too much nitrogen through grass clippings?
I'm guessing the clippings would have to be a layer so thick they would go anaerobic.

Expressed the way we label chemical fertilizers, even rich compost is something like .5-.5-.5 ... 20 times less concentrated than 10-10-10 fertilizer.

I don't think fresh grass clippings can have more than 1% N, so you're OK using at least ten times as many grass clippings as 10-10-10 fertilizer, even if no N at all were lost from mulch as it broke down.

Then there is the "slow-release" nature of mulch. That spreads out the impact of N from grass mulch.

(Maybe your Alaskan spring is an exception: if the freezes and thaws arranged for several inches of fresh green grass to dump ALL its N during one spring week when your snow peas were growing, it MIGHT give them more N than they need (but I never heard of that concern before today). And it would be great for a leafy crop like lettuce, chard or Bok Choy.

Mostly what I read is that "you can't have too much compost". But the people who say they lay down many inches of organic mulch every year usually say they use chopped leaves, not fresh grass clippings.

If the grass clippings are laid down as top-dress mulch, not turned right under the soil, I kind of think that they self-compost and turn brown before they merge into the soil. I think that occurs as microbes grow inside the grass tissue and convert easily digested plant tissue into mold, yeast, bacteria and whatever. They suck up the N pretty quickly. Then they work on the cellulose, lignin and humus over a period of months or years (or are themselves digested by other soil organisms).

If there was excessive N released during the initial rapid self-digestion, faster than the composting organisms could take up, it MIGHT leach into the soil, but I think more likely it would be lost as ammonia to the air, as in compost piles that are too rich or too basic. (Acid conditions make ammonia less volatile.)

In any event, it would only be a brief pulse of excess N, not an ongoing condition (I'm still just guessing here).

A layer of grass clippings so thick that it matted down and went slimy-ly anaerobic might lose some N as ammonia, and/or over-fertilize the ground under it, depending on rainfall. But if it were fluffed up and dried a little, aerobic microbes would suck up soluble N before it could leach out. Microbes grow and consume very rapidly!

During the initial browning of the clippings, green grass tissues are converted into compost organisms. Those compost organisms combine C and N in good balance, and the brown or yellow grass stalks are either balanced or C-rich. As they die, are consumed, or break down further, they slowly release a pretty balanced mix of C and N, I think.

People will grow multiple crops of leguminous cover crops and plow them all under, trying to bring the N level of soil up to an adequate level. The4y never seem to worry about 'too much N".


But it would be more useful to hear someone's actual experience with putting thick layers of grass clippings onto vegetable crops.

All interesting and makes sense. I was going to use the grass on areas between larger plants to try to keep pathways free of weeds. Again, I hadn't thought about the fact that dumping too much on would just turn to a slimy mess as the bottom layers became anaerobic . I suppose if I had leaves to layer the grass with it would become great compost. Although hate to waste compost on paths. Would rather it went around flowers and plants. Which I guess argues for a compost pile where I can turn it.

Oh well. I will leave that for next year. Will be interesting to see how the leaf cover works over winter and into spring. At least some neighbors are happy to get rid of leaves without having to bag them and pay to have them hauled away. And the neighbor kids are happy to make some money raking them. Win-Win for all of us.

Rick said: "If the grass clippings are laid down as top-dress mulch, not turned right under the soil, I kind of think that they self-compost and turn brown before they merge into the soil. "

Mary, if you got bogged down in Rick's excellent, albeit lengthy, discussion about using the grass clippings... the sentence that I quoted pretty much sums it up as far as the way I use the clippings. I don't like to spread them too thickly all at one time, because they just turn plain nasty (never mind what they might be doing in terms of nitrogen). If you've ever smelled a calf pen that needed to be cleaned out, that's what they're like when they go anaerobic... But, it depends on the weather... if we're having a stretch of warm, sunny, dry weather I'll spread them a bit thicker (say 3-4"). If there's a lot of rain coming up, I'll use less, until they have time to dry out and I can add more. And if I get to the point where I have plenty everywhere in the garden, some will just go on the compost pile (mine is very unstructured). In the past I would always rototill whatever was left of the grass clippings (they really just tend to disappear over the course of the growing season) and any leaves and stuff that we put on the garden, in the fall and then again in the spring; this year none of it got tilled under due to too much rainy weather and it still all just disappeared. And this year DH decided the lawn was starting to suffer from not having any clippings left on it so I actually ran a little short... I think we're going to need to have a little talk about that next summer!

(oops, we cross posted!)

I (finally) got my garlic planted today -- beautiful fall weather this weekend, had to take advantage of it because we have another stretch of rain coming (and I believe I saw something about possible SNOW on Friday...) Well, that WOULD be a quite typical Halloween here -- it always seems to either rain or snow, or some combination of the two.

Lots of work happened in the garden this past weekend, got the last bit of the cabbage and kale planted, also pulled up the last of my tomato plants and long beans. I also planted my red clover seeds so hopefully I'll have some good green mulch for the winter. I also dug up these babies.



It's about 20 lbs of white sweet potatoes, I hope they are very amazingly sweet and last for thanksgiving!

I also bought a bushel of green delicious apples I'm planning on making some canned apple butter, but now I'm fearful of my canning talents. Two of my hot sauce bottles exploded when I opened them, guess I didn't add in enough vinegar or let it ferment long enough?

Still haven't gotten my garlic or spinach planted Sandy, hopefully I'll be able to do that next weekend.

Oberon46 said:... I suppose if I had leaves to layer the grass with it would become great compost. Although hate to waste compost on paths. Would rather it went around flowers and plants. Which I guess argues for a compost pile where I can turn it.

I agree that some stiff leaves or stems or thin twigs would keep even a thick layer of grass clippings aerated. Would it be practical to lay down 1-2 inch layers at a time? Wait for them to dry out and turn brown before adding more moist green clippings? I would expect 1" of fresh clippings on top of 1" of dry brown clippings to compost very quickly unless frozen or baked dry.

And I would hate to waste finished compost on paths! Some people have used carpet fragments to cover paths.

>> Which I guess argues for a compost pile where I can turn it.

When I was a kid, I hated to rake grass clippings off the lawn, where they were most needed. I would rake any thick spots around to break them up before they could go slimy.

I planted half my garlic today. At least now I have some in the ground to experiment with this year.

Thanks Sandy and Rick.
I also planted garlic for the first time this year. Hope it is deep enough not to freeze. May add some more leaves just to be certain.

Wonderful fall and time for vegetable soup. I was wondering how the yellow cherry tomatoes I froze would be in my soup, but no fear, it was wonderful. So much fun to do when you use the stuff from your garden. I could eat soup every night of the week.

Crusty bread, soup, and thou!!! What else could you possibly ask for

A bottle of wine !!

Right on, Mary!!!

Mary, are you keeping up with my Dawgs?

Cookies4kids said:Wonderful fall and time for vegetable soup. I was wondering how the yellow cherry tomatoes I froze would be in my soup, but no fear, it was wonderful. So much fun to do when you use the stuff from your garden. I could eat soup every night of the week.

Crusty bread, soup, and thou!!! What else could you possibly ask for

Couldn't agree more -- I was just thinking today that it would be a good time to bake some bread! (and make some soup to go with it!!)

Mary, I don't think freezing is a real problem for the garlic -- but freezing/thawing/freezing etc is, so mulching, or just ensuring a good snow cover, helps keep that from happening. We had frost down about 8 feet last year (no joke), so mine was obviously frozen! (and yet every clove that I planted came up in the spring). It takes a lot of faith to be a gardener!!

Heres my 2 cents to add to the grass clippings/compost discussion:
Saw a video on YouTube of. Guy who raked grass clippings into a pile, held it in place witha cylinder of chicken wire, then every week or so pulled the pile apart with a rake and re-piled it. If it didn't get rained on he watered with hose a few times. After 6 weeks or so of this it was broken down and composty looking.
I just raked some up some grass clippings and added to my compost bin, if I'm ambitious I will try the raking apart trick. Really need more compost because our leaves haven't fallen yet.

PS yes I watch videos about composting on YouTube.