Building Your Garden (Quickly)

Sheet Mulching

This is for those of you who are looking at a lawn but thinking garden.

The concept is simple. Pile a bunch of organic matter on top of the ground and let it decompose. The material on top smothers the vegetation below, killing it. All of it turns into a nice rich medium ready for planting.

The practice is a little more involved, but here are the basics.

Place a thick layer of newspaper (8 sheets) or cardboard over the area you wish to become your garden. On top of that, place a few inches (3-5) of compost. Cover the area with some kind of mulch, preferably straw (should technically have less seed than hay, but doesn't always work that way). Try your best to avoid using wood chips to mulch vegetable beds. Wood chips will take a lot of nitrogen out of your soils as they decompose.

Plant right into the compost. You have a garden!

For this method to be quick, you clearly need a source of compost. If you've been composting at home, then you might have enough. Otherwise you'll need to acquire some elsewhere. Municipal compost is generally pretty cheap and you won't have any plastic bags to throw away. However you probably will need a truck to get it, or have it delivered for an extra charge.

If you buy bags of compost, make sure you are not buying peat moss. I was tricked a few weeks ago. Read the ingredients! Peat moss is great for bog plants. Not great for vegetable gardens. Furthermore, we need to stop draining bogs and mining the peat. It's really no good for Earth or your garden.

Eventually, the roots of your plants will grow through the cardboard and into the freshly composted lawn underneath. You'll have some happy happy plants and a lawn in retreat.

Sheet mulching is one of the most important tools in building healthy environmentally sound gardens. It is also a main concept in permaculture. Learn it well and you and you're plants will be better for it.