The beds are created

This week was another busy one in the school garden. Students came in and transformed their piece of dirt into a garden bed using the 'lasagne method' of no dig gardening. It's a pretty simple method of building up the bed with a lot layers of good stuff, which will decompose down into even better stuff as the seedlings grow. Ok, not very scientific, but you get my drift.

The first layer is of course, the dirt. We are lucky to be growing on some great soil. Next comes a thick layer of newspapers, which a watered, creating a paper mache effect, which should stop any rouge grass or weeds from seeing the light of day. Then it's a thick layer of Hay, then mushroom compost, another layer of Hay. Then it's time to gather round and sprinkle on some molasses and then some dolomite. Molasses is a by product of the refinement of sugarcane or grapes. It promotes microbial activity. Dolomite is added to lower the acidity of the garden bed and add some magnesium for the joy of our little seedlings, which are due to be planted the following week.

We finished off each session with the students 'planting' the boxes we created the previous week. As the cardboard breaks down, they will become part of the whole garden bed.

We will plant the seedlings within a 'cylinder' of a mix of mushroom compost and road base (yes, we use the road base to lower the acidity of the compost). The young seedlings' roots take in all the goodness from this initial layer. Meanwhile the rest of the bed starts to do it's thing, breaking down to be ready for the plants' roots to be searching beyond the initial compost, towards even more goodness.

Over the coming weeks, we will see how successful it will be.

Next week, we plant leafy greens.

Sprinkling of dolomite goodness