This year apart from turning over the compost pile’s and shoveling manure onto my garden beds my goal is to do NO digging in the garden. So over the next 12-24 months(as a trial) I will be growing ALL my vegetables using this organic method seen in the picture below, with one exception of both my two 9ft by 20ft potato beds that I am growing in 100 percent straw straw this year. P.S. Please don’t hesitate to Let me know your thoughts on this matter and if this method of growing goes by a different name in the permaculture system.
looks good nicholas, good graphics and all see how we do ours: https://www.lensgarden.com.au/straw_bale_garden.htm will be building new gardens after our new house is built they will be as high as a sheet of corrugated is wide, will do teh same similar as we always do waht we do fits under the hugelkultu banner modern adaption, we have pile of pushed over trees being readied for burning so hope to cut them up into manageable sizes with smelly noisy chain saw. up here mushy compost comes in 1 tonne bags now. len
why bother layering like that? why not just mix all the ingredients first and fill the bed up? in theory it's seems like a good idea but really, it's just a gimmick. firstly it's way to low, 8in high yet you have 18in of material, so that's 10in above your bed level. it will dry out and cook the roots. what about mulching the top of all that? another 4in? I suppose the theory is the material will all break down and turn into soil? if you just mixed it all up it would already be good soil. lucerne hay at the bottom is a waste of good lucerne.
Looks good to me. I think the lucerne hay down low will introduce a good amount of protozoa and nitrogen, and fertiliser above will encourage worms to move up through the bed working their magic. Have you seen the clip on Youtube by Emilia Hazlip, who does this method but keeps the vegetation in the bed to add organic matter. I think this is the method Fukuoka usd so as not to compost. Keep us updated in your yields, it would have been good to have the comparison there. Good luck!
I think this is what is known as lasagna gardening. Personally, I would have to agree with FREE Permaculture here about mulching. Why not put the straw layer on top? Fresh, active compost shouldn't really be exposed to the elements. Edit- what kind of fertilizer are you planning on using?
It is lasagna gardening Finchj, you are totally correct. It also looks like a great compost pile start to me too, which would provide heat through out the season which might be needed in some climates.
I had 18" of material when I started the same method last winter, now it is 1-2 inches thick. It only took it a few weeks to compact by half on it's own. In lasagna gardening the "fertilizer" is manure. I do recommend either straw or leaves above the compost, or skip the compost and make your bed 30-36 inches deep and give them another month or two. I had the best production ever from my garden this year using lasagna gardening. Good luck
Don't forget that it is better to use stuff that you have locally rather than pay good money getting resources from a distance. A thick layer of leafy weeds from your garden at the bottom are a good source of nitrogen. A thick layers of dry leaves from under a tree in your yard can replace the straw layer and are a carbon source.
I think the layering is just less work, fling on whatever you've got, wet it down, save yourself stirring and mixing, because as time goes on you won't have everything you need at the same time, so layer it as you have it. The plants respond just as well to layers. I think the trick is keeping it damp enough through the whole thing. One thing I have had trouble with is the newspaper or cardboard. It doesn't rain where I am, in the summer, and the cardboard and newspaper absorbs the water away from the soil, lifts up, and allows drying air under it and over it, drying it all out. In the forearm-high beds I layer up I have had very few weeds make their way up through that thickness, so the cardboard and newspaper didn't help in that regard. I won't use it again. I think mowed green weeds are way more full of nutrition than sterilized papers.