Making Straw Bale and Lasagna Gardens

This year I tried two different types of gardens -- a lasagna and a straw bale garden.  To make a lasagna garden you take a large piece of cardboard and place it on the ground where you want your garden.  I went to a store that sells large appliances and they gave me a big piece of cardboard for free.  The cardboard is supposed to prevent weeds from coming up through the garden.  The first layer of the lasagna garden is soil, then compost, then well rotted manure.  The idea is to layer the garden like you would if you were making a lasagna.  I put a fence around my garden to keep neighborhood dogs from digging in it.  The lasagna garden is my favorite type of garden.  Last year I grew 14 pumpkins in it.  The second type of garden is a straw bale garden.  You take four bales of straw and put them in a square, touching each other. In the middle you put compost, soil, and well rotted manure up to the top of the bales.  This mixture is also put on the top of the bales. The trick to the bale garden is to keep it well watered and to give the plants lots of organic fertilizer because there isn't any nutrition in the bales themselves. 

Straw Bale Garden

Lasagna Garden