lindseyde
Newly Registered
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2015 6:43 pm

Newbie to Lasagna Garden

Help! I started my first raised bed lasagna garden this year, spent months taking care on the layering making sure I had good soil and was excited for spring to plant. So after planting my seeds they spouted right off and then that was it! Weeks later they have not grown at all. I keep it evenly moist and getting good sunlight. I thought for awhile we were having too much rain and cloudy weather but no more excuses with our recent beautiful weather. It does have a lot of dung cup fungus, could that mean something negative? Any suggestions at all would be great!

imafan26
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Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

You did it right you layered, what you are making is really a compost bed you can plant in. Compost by itself does not have a lot of fertilizer and organic fertilizer is slow in releasing especially nitrogen.

Plants need a lot of nitrogen especially when they are small and growing. If the compost is not fully composted yet (it depends on the material that was used, it will also be competing for the available nitrogen.

Usually if you are growing organically, especially in the first three years, you need to supplement with the fertilizer. You can make manure tea or use fish emusion weekly if your neighbors don't complain. There are also some granular organic fertilizers that are available like 10-10-10, 8-8-8, complehumus, bone meal, blood meal, sustane ( fish based fertilizer).

Every year you will add another layer of compost to the lasagna bed and till in residues. If you plant beans inoculate them first cowpeas (black eyed peas are the best for nitrogen fixing. You won't really be eating the beans as you will till them in when they are about 6 weeks old, they will then release the nitrogen as the plant and bacteria decay and that nitrogen will be available to the following crop. Sow a nitrogen fixing crop at the end of the season as well to pump up the nitrogen for the next time.

https://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/f ... arden.html

lindseyde
Newly Registered
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2015 6:43 pm

Thanks for the detailed info. I will make sure to get more nitrogen in there. Probably with the tea method. Not a big fan of the urine method I've been told about. I'm wondering if they are not drying out enough in between waterings too. We are getting lots of rain since planting.



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