Youngsters plant lasagna garden
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POLSON — A lasagna garden brings thoughts of tomatoes, basil and garlic melding together.
While the lasagna garden being planted in the community garden behind the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church did have lots of cherry tomato plants, there were no layers of pasta oozing cheese.
Instead there were layers of newspapers and/or cardboard over the grassy ground.
At about 10:15 a.m. on July 1, community garden activists Christi Buffington and Kelly Ware explained lasagna gardens.
Ware explained to the volunteer workforce from the Ecumenical Vacation Bible Camp that lasagna is layers of pasta, cheese and sauce. A lasagna garden also has layers — cardboard or newspapers, straw and then pockets of soil where plants grow.
“You need carbon, like the sticks and straw, water, and nitrogen from grass clippings, manure and bone meal,”Ware said. “It’s a weed-free, don’t-break-your-back-style of gardening,” Ware said, describing lasagna gardens.
Then the work began as adults from the Catholic and Methodist churches and kids wheel-barrowed in drifts of straw to cover the paper layer.
Then kids made “nests” in the straw and shoveled soil into the nests.
Flats full of petunias and marigolds, leggy tomato plants, cabbage, kale, lettuce, brussel sprouts, peas, squash and other vegetables were distributed beside the nests. Teams of kids and adults planted and watered the re-located plants. Others dug holes for seed potatoes and still others made more paper layers in the fenced garden.
Buffington said the Catholic church, its parish and its parish council have been instrumental in getting the garden going, since the land itself belongs to Immaculate Conception.
Immacaulate Conception and its closest neighbor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, worked together on piping water to the garden plot.
AmeriCorps workers, members of the U-11 boys soccer team, the Cub Scouts and many other community members have cooperated to make the community garden a reality.
Buffington said Toni Young, one of the adult volunteers, worked hard during the last week to get funding for the plants, soil and straw so the kids could volunteer in the community garden.
In late summer and autumn, the vegetables raised in the garden will go to the Polson Loaves and Fish Food Pantry and Soup’s On, according to Young.
