Gram’s making lasagna in the garden, the 8-year-old tells his mother. She’s doing what? Susan asks, looking out over the deck railing, expecting to see some culinary experiment in the solar oven.
The boy points instead to a 6-by-12-foot plot of wet black earth that looks more like a large grave than an Italian meal. This same plot was, in fact, the recent burial sight of a perennial flowerbed choked to death by killer weeds.
Weary of weeding, I turned to a book by Patricia Lanza, “Lasagna Gardening,” that promises fabulous vegetable, flower and herb beds with no more digging or weeding. Ever. I’d read about this book in Organic Gardening a few months back but wasn’t ready for it until three weeks of annual brush clearing had left my back, ankles and wrists in agony. Show me the way to those lasagna layers. I found the book on a mission to Borders and added it to my haul of summer reading for my grandson.
One small problem. When I got it home, I noticed the title varied from the book I’d read about. “Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces.” Hello. There are no small spaces here. There are vast expanses of rocky slopes that give new meaning to the term “dirt poor.” This very large space is crying for Ms. Lanza’s “layering system for big results.”
So I adapt my sister’s suggestion of breaking up this mammoth hillside into separate, less daunting sections. A different mindset. Actually, it could be kind of a mosaic of small gardens tucked along a winding gravel path. So I read on.
Mark out your space, Lanza writes. Don’t weed it. Don’t dig it. Instead, cover the ground-weeds, clods, rocks and all-with wet newspaper. Full sections, folded and overlapped at the edges. In time, she assures us, the weeds and their seeds will die, smothered under soggy wads of yesterday’s news. I can dig that.
I cart two weeks worth of the Los Angeles Times, Malibu Times and Bakersfield Californian down to the plot along with a plastic storage container for dunking them in water. Calendar, Opinion, Classified-no color or slick ads-dunked section by section and laid to rest. News you can use. Certainly a more productive end than lining the bottom of a birdcage.
On top of the old newsprint, Lanza says to put a layer of straw, spoiled hay, peat moss or compost. I have none of these in suitable quantity. Why? Because I flunked Compost