The Lasagna Method: Don't Till Your Soil!
September 15, 2015

The Lasagna Method: Don't Till Your Soil!

The Lasagna Method is an alternative to what most gardeners think is the norm. Mixing and tilling the soil twice a year is a traditional method that most home gardeners don’t think twice about. The reality is that we can do harm to soil by churning it up. Turning the soil actually damages the established microbial communities and disrupts the complex soil food web living in your garden.

The Soil Food Web

The Lasagna Method is a layering method, similar to how you make a lasagna dish. In addition to being a layering method, it emphasizes the concept that is being more widely promoted in the last few years that it is better to not till your soil or physically disturb your soil at regular intervals like a lot of home gardeners would do in the past where every Spring they till it as deep as they can till it. The worry there is you’re going to damage beneficial colonies of microbes that we’re working hard to start. With the lasagna method, just keep putting organic soil amendments on top of each other and don’t till. Try to minimize physical disturbance of the soil.

Privets before and after applying John & Bob’s Nature’s Gardening Kit

When soil is healthy and teaming with microbes, it is unnecessary to till because the microbes do the tilling for us. When gardening organically, soil life is fostered with the use of compost and other organic soil amendments, found in our all-in-one Nature’s Gardening Kit. The way we use John & Bob’s products practices the Lasagna Method. Simple, twice per year, topical applications of the organic soil amendments Optimize, Maximize, and Nourish-Biosol are applied over the top of existing soil. It doesn’t need to be tilled in, doesn’t need to be mixed in, won’t burn, and uses the normal watering strategy that is already in place.

Red Begonias treated twice per year with applications of Blend

Over time, the organic soil amendments will work their way into the soil, providing soil life, food for soil life, and attractants for soil life. They not only feed plants but they feed the soil microbes as well. These microbes unlock nutrients for plants, condition the soil, keep the texture and structure where it needs to be, and even mix in the new amendments themselves! The Lasagna Method uses John & Bob’s products exactly as they were formulated.