Lasagna gardening is one of the easiest ways to grow vegetables at home and turn a high-maintenance lawn into a productive garden space. What are the pros and cons of the lasagna garden? Do they work for clay soils?

Lasagna gardening - what is it?

The easiest way to turn a backyard lawn into an organic food-producing garden is by building a lasagna garden, as there is no digging required.

The first thing we will clear up for any rookie gardeners; we aren’t planting noodle trees where we will be harvesting penne and rigatoni. Not even tomatoes, aubergines, zucchinis and bell-peppers, although they'd go great in home-made lasagne and we could! A lasagna garden is actually a technique often referred to as ‘sheet composting’ or the 'sheet mulch method', and is a great way to keep kitchen food waste from ending up in a landfill and easily get a quick start to growing your own food at home.

It's also one of the best ways to convert an area of high-maintenance lawn into an eco-friendly, productive and possibly organic garden - without having to go out and buy soil, especially if the underlying conditions are a heavy clay soil, lasagne gardening produces a light tilth, full of nutrients, and ready to grow delicious vegetables in the shade or in full sun.  

The name lasagna garden - also known as a lasagne garden, which is represented on purpose to be fair:) - simply refers to the method of layering soil, mulch and a root barrier on top of grass in a way that uses the nutrients from existing lawns to grow food. 

Lasagna gardening - the pros & cons

First, the pro's of lasagne gardens:

1. Lasagne gardens save money – much of what they are is recycled stuff
2. Lasagna gardening improves and builds up the soil – adding drainage and tilth to clay soils and sandy soils
3. Lasagna gardens are low maintenance – no-till and easy to do by following the simple instructions below
4. Lasagna gardening gives quick results  - prepare a bed in the early spring and have fresh vegetables all summer 

Secondly, the cons of lasagna gardening: 

1. The carbon sources in Lasagna gardening can be controversial - recyclable paper and cardboard might not be the best choices
2. Poor execution in Lasagna gardens can slow nutrient return and result in low soil oxygen content – be careful with layers to avoid suffocating the soil
3. Lasagna gardens need careful planning – they still take time to become productive
4. Materials used may be toxic – certain papers and cardboard contain chemicals, heavy metals and plastics
5. Lasagna Garden size is Limited. It simply would not be practical to try to do an entire field in the lasagna garden method.
6. In certain climates lasagna gardening encourages pests – slugs, snails, vermin, snakes and even alligators can all nest in the layers depending how and where they’re built.

If you are still unsure whether this is a great choice for your garden, for a full discussion on lasagna gardening pro's and cons see here.

The steps to creating a backyard lasagna garden are:

1) Lasagne gardens; Lay out the garden boundaries

When lasagne gardening, design the perimeter in whatever way floats your boat – use a string line, lay down some logs or old 2x4s to help create perfectly straight angles and lines. Or, if you’re not the kind of person who likes to be confined to boxes, then just wing it. It’s okay to color outside the lines here, that’s what makes it fun. Ideally 

If your garden is a place where you like to hang out, then you will take better care of it and it will produce more for you. The case we are using here was done as a swirling garden just for kicks. Is this an extremely efficient use of space? Nope. But it’s fun to hang out in and mess around with.