anyone who has been following the progress of our gardens by reading this blog should remember the lasagna garden that we built this spring. it sits along side our front walkway in the long bed that runs the length of the sidewalk. we decided to build another one at the opposite end, it is smaller and features slightly different plants since the same varieties of coleus and begonias were not available. we eliminated the fresh grass cuttings in favor of old grass cuttings and built the bed with compost, leaves and old grass layers and the results were better. the lack of green material was a plus, it did not get "hot"and the plants did much better from the start.
with this in mind, we set out to build a new bed out front. i have always wanted one with a sign that has the house numbers displayed so anyone looking for the house can find it easily. another of my goals for this bed was to do it cheaply, imagine that-a cheap garden. well, we did it and we spent less that $50 dollars. while that may not seem cheap, keep in mind that gardening is not cheap if you are building a bed from scratch unless you do as we did and rely completely on the lasagna method of building layers with found materials. first, the ugly green bed came from a neighbors yard, it had a sign stating take me-free on it and darry did just that. the silver scroll piece is actually from the original screen door that was on the house when we bought it and linda and the girls brought the house numbers back from their trip to spain two years ago. we assembled them and mounted them to some scrap pieces that we found in the basement. to erect the bed and the number sign, we spent less than $3 to buy screws, nuts and wire to assemble them. we put it all in place and began to build the bed by layering wet newspapers on the ground-better than tossing them in the bin! next we built layers from compost, grass, leaves, peat/potting soil, coffee grinds and pine needles. Since we didn't have enough soil, we bought 4 bags for $9 dollars. most of the materials came from the yard with the exception of the pine needles, we had to gather them at the demo garden and of course, the coffee grinds. luckily for me, working in a restaurant means an endless supply of vegetable and fruit material for composting and we had a large pile to use. most people do not realize that Starbucks gives away the used coffee and espresso grinds for gardening. you can ask them for the grinds, sometimes they bag them and set them in a basket in the front of the store or they place them in large bags and store them in a bin outdoors with the recyclables which is how the store we visit does it. we also have a lot of trees and a lot of leaves so we were able to build a nice deep bed. the real splurge came with the plants, $35. now this may seem like a lot for plants but, we purchased 13@$.99 each and 7 @$2.49 each, a total of 20 plants which will fill out the bed nicely. as for the ugly green bed, we brought home some seedlings for cardinal climbers and dropped in a few morning glories and before long, that thing should be covered! the other great thing about this bed, it didn't take long to build, less than 4 hours from start to finish!
Recycling at its finest!
with this in mind, we set out to build a new bed out front. i have always wanted one with a sign that has the house numbers displayed so anyone looking for the house can find it easily. another of my goals for this bed was to do it cheaply, imagine that-a cheap garden. well, we did it and we spent less that $50 dollars. while that may not seem cheap, keep in mind that gardening is not cheap if you are building a bed from scratch unless you do as we did and rely completely on the lasagna method of building layers with found materials. first, the ugly green bed came from a neighbors yard, it had a sign stating take me-free on it and darry did just that. the silver scroll piece is actually from the original screen door that was on the house when we bought it and linda and the girls brought the house numbers back from their trip to spain two years ago. we assembled them and mounted them to some scrap pieces that we found in the basement. to erect the bed and the number sign, we spent less than $3 to buy screws, nuts and wire to assemble them. we put it all in place and began to build the bed by layering wet newspapers on the ground-better than tossing them in the bin! next we built layers from compost, grass, leaves, peat/potting soil, coffee grinds and pine needles. Since we didn't have enough soil, we bought 4 bags for $9 dollars. most of the materials came from the yard with the exception of the pine needles, we had to gather them at the demo garden and of course, the coffee grinds. luckily for me, working in a restaurant means an endless supply of vegetable and fruit material for composting and we had a large pile to use. most people do not realize that Starbucks gives away the used coffee and espresso grinds for gardening. you can ask them for the grinds, sometimes they bag them and set them in a basket in the front of the store or they place them in large bags and store them in a bin outdoors with the recyclables which is how the store we visit does it. we also have a lot of trees and a lot of leaves so we were able to build a nice deep bed. the real splurge came with the plants, $35. now this may seem like a lot for plants but, we purchased 13@$.99 each and 7 @$2.49 each, a total of 20 plants which will fill out the bed nicely. as for the ugly green bed, we brought home some seedlings for cardinal climbers and dropped in a few morning glories and before long, that thing should be covered! the other great thing about this bed, it didn't take long to build, less than 4 hours from start to finish!
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