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Turn fallen leaves into veggie-garden soil
Are you wondering what to do with some of those leaves all over the lawn right now? How about using them to start a raised-bed vegetable garden? I speak from experience, growing vegetables in raised beds is easy to do, and leaves are a key ingredient in making them.
The best time to prepare a raised bed for a vegetable garden, or any kind of garden, is in the fall. Using a method that is often referred to as lasagna gardening or no-till gardening, you can let nature prepare the soil for you with no digging or tilling needed.
First, choose a location for your vegetable garden that gets at least six hours of sun each day and is fairly level. Then build a simple wood frame for the bed using any wood except for chemically treated or pressure-treated lumber. The wood frame won’t last forever, but should last for a few seasons. Make the raised bed any size, but don’t make it wider than four feet, which allows you to reach across the bed from either side without stepping on it. I make most of my beds 4 feet by 8 feet, using 1-inch by 6-inch lumber.
Set the wood frame on the ground, right on top of the grass. It’s not necessary to remove the grass, though you can cut it short if you’d like. Then put down several layers of newspaper or plain cardboard over the grass and wet it down. Cover that with a couple of inches of top soil. On top of that add several inches of shredded leaves or grass clippings, more top soil, followed by more shredded leaves, then more soil.
Don’t worry if the layers go above the sides of the frame because the earthworms and other soil-decaying organisms will soon take over and decompose everything down to a nice bed of good soil ready for planting in the spring.
For more information on building these kinds of raised garden beds, check out the book Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza.
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