Kathy Jentz, Editor/Publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine, shows you how to create a new garden bed without digging.

Video Transcription

Hi, I’m Kathy Jentz. I’m showing how to winterize your vegetable garden and we’re going to go ahead and create a new bed so we can plant in it early next spring. You’d think we need a shovel to create the bed but you’re wrong. We’ll just put the shovel aside and we need to clear out a space hopefully in a nice, sunny area of your garden and we’re going to show you how to do layer or lasagna gardening. So, your first layer to your lasagna is newspaper. So, you’re going to want to lay it fairly thick and make sure not to leave any gaps between the sections because that’s where the weeds will pop up through. So, we’re going to do a big area here. I would recommend at least 10 to 20 sheets thickness. If you’re doing this on a windy day, you would like to have some rocks nearby just to place them really quickly or some bricks and what I like to do is have the hose already on and ready so I can wet it down and that’s just to keep it from flying away. Your next layer in your lasagna gardening can be compost, straw, hay, any organic materials, grass clippings from your lawn, vegetable cuttings from your kitchen, anything that will decay. Now, your third layer, you’re going to want to use a nice mulch so this can be Pine-fines or Leafgro, just something nice and thick that will hold everything down for the winter. So, it’s just like making a layer cake or lasagna and you could spread that out. And what will happen here is that underneath the newspaper will decay and within 3 months you’ll have beautiful loamy soil underneath to plant in. Now, if you’re an impatient gardener and you want to go ahead and saw some winter crops you can just cut a hole using a trowel into your layers, plant right in there, fill back in.