Want a low-maintenance garden you can grow and tend with kids? Check out lasagna gardening! 

When I first started gardening, growing my own vegetables seemed impossible. I participated in a group community garden, but at least the other volunteers knew what they were doing. I knew nothing about planting seeds, keeping them growing, or protecting them from anything.

But one day, a friend, urban farmer, and fellow volunteer introduced me to a concept that she refered to as “lazy gardening.” It was a way to grow a low-maintenance garden that was also totally organic and sustainable. As both an ecologist and even before kids, a pretty busy person, it immediately made sense to me. To this day, I garden this way. Despite having two small children, my garden is relatively productive. The best part? That the short amount of time it does take to maintain it is often things I can do with my kids. No fussy tasks here.

What is this miracle low-maintenance garden approach?

Lasagna gardening. Also called sheet mulching or sheet composting, lasagna gardening is a permaculture method of gardening that’s easy, cheap, and fun to do with kids.

This method works so well because it mimics the natural process of leaf litter and other organic matter building up on the forest floor. In the forest, dead leaves and other plants slowly accumulate and decompose into soil.

Lasagna gardening does the same thing in your garden, only much faster. Instead of the organic matter drifting down from the trees, you pile it up yourself.

Benefits of Growing a Low-Maintenance Garden with Lasagna Gardening

Because the organic matter (like leaves, straw, or newspaper) you layer is largely cheap or free, you save quite a bit of money. This technique doesn’t leave any disturbed soil, so it’s much harder for weeds to root in than normal. It produces such good soil that we rarely fertilize. The plants get so strong that they withstand some insect chewing and the onslaught from our weedy yard.

It takes some serious prep time in the fall, but makes for an extremely low-maintenance garden in the spring and summer.

Steps to Build Your Low-Maintenance Garden

Here are the steps we follow each year in November after we harvest all of our vegetables:

1. Pull out all of the left-over garden plants. If there are weeds, we pull them. Don’t worry too much about getting all of the roots out.
2. Lay down a layer of cardboard across the entire garden. The cardboard smothers any of the remaining weeds. The larger the pieces, the better. When we get really big cardboard boxes, we keep them to use in the fall.
3. Spread compost on top of the cardboard. Our compost doesn’t always fully break down, but that’s okay because it gets very buried momentarily. This part is fascinating to little kids. My older son was just in awe that all of the food and newspapers we threw in there transformed into (mostly) dirt.  How cool is that?
4. Lay down a layer of newspapers. This is where we start getting into the lasagna layering part. This is all about getting as much organic matter piled up as possible. If it’s a blustery fall day like it usually is when we do this, I frequently wet the newspapers with a hose so they at least stay in place for a little while. Sometimes, I pile bricks or stones on top of them so they don’t fly away. If you forget this part or can’t find enough newspapers, the garden will survive. I did last year because of baby brain.
5. Pile up about 1-2 feet of straw and/or leaves. Most directions for lasagna gardening recommend using straw, but if you don’t live on a farm, that’s not really a common thing to have around. We buy a single straw bale as a decoration for Halloween and break it down for the garden. Multi-use FTW! Apparently “ruined straw” that’s been used for animal bedding is even better. Unfortunately, Chris drew the line on raising chickens, so we don’t have any of that. Be sure what you’re using is straw and not hay – hay has seeds in it that will come up in the spring.The straw we buy doesn’t provide nearly enough bulk, so we use leaves for the rest. Because the trees in our yard don’t produce enough leaves, we perform a bit of public service. We trek over to the cemetery next-door to help clean up. If you don’t have trees or a friendly neighborhood cemetery, see if any of your neighbors would like help raking and bagging.
   It’s particularly great to involve kids in this step. I rake up the leaves and then Sprout plops his bottom down in them, his cautious version of “jumping.” He helps us pile them onto a tarp, which we use to drag them from the cemetery to the garden. Last year, his role was particularly important. That day, I was working with Little Bird strapped onto me in the baby carrier. After a couple of particularly nasty spit-ups, I realized I was probably roiling Little Bird’s little tummy with all of my up and down motion!
6. Add compost, either from your composter or purchased. We buy LeafGro, a brand that’s specific to our county’s composting program. It’s also gloriously cheap. Garden stores generally sell large bags of compost that work just as well.
7. Add another layer of newspapers or paper bags.
8. Pile on 1-2 feet more of leaves, or if you have it, straw.
9. Add more compost or garden soil.
10. Repeat until you run out of time or leaves! For the final layer, we put down compost, which helps keep all of the leaves from blowing away over the winter. You can also plant a cover crop, like hairy vetch, into the compost. In the spring, you just rake up the cover crop and leave it there.

In the spring, we put small portions of potting soil specifically where we plant seeds. This gives them something to root in without giving the weed seeds enough space to plant themselves.

The right side is finished – the left side still needs the last set of layers.

Happy gardening!

Read about how we started seeds with our kids. If you love gardening and sharing environmental sustainability activities with your kids, join our Green and Sustainable Parenting Facebook group!