When I bought this 1/4 acre and 1945 mobile, I was looking forward to messing with the soil and creating an organic garden. I found a great used book at Beaver Creek Books (on Main Street) called Lasagna Gardening. The whole idea is there is no digging – you just build up the soil from easily gathered soil amendments and keep on stacking.  Since it’s the middle of summer and lousy for planting anyway, I decide this is the year to create a wonderful soil for next season.

My ingredients are all gathered locally in Camp Verde, for free, and are completely organic. Here’s how it’s going so far:

1. Mulch! APS came by and needed to cut down a tree they thought was messing with power lines. I asked them to leave the mulch they created. They chipped it on site and dumped it in my driveway. It’s a massive mound of mulch! I wonder if one could get unlimited free mulch from them via a simple phone call. I bet they have mountains of it somewhere. I hope they are keeping it out of the landfill.

2. Newspapers and Cardboard – I have been saving newspaper and cardboard from me, my neighbors, and a few businesses. This will be the wet Ground Zero of my garden beds to smother off the weeds.

3. Coffee Grounds – Starbucks has been very generous with their Grounds for the Garden, so this will be a ‘green’ layer to counteract the ‘brown’ layer of the mulch.

4. Compost - I really don’t eat much and my own compost pile is pathetic. Still, it’s set up my pile, cooking away. I might have to find neighbors or business willing to give me their food scraps, since I will need much, much more.

5. Yard Wastes – everything I snip or pull gets tossed in the beds.

6. Rain Water - with all these monsoons and storms I have containers laying out under my gutters – I’ve collected gallons and gallons of free water to pour in my bed for extra cooking goodness.

Still Looking to Find:

  • Animal Manure (horse, cow, goat or chicken would all be good)
  • Spoiled Hay
  • Sawdust
  • Wood Ashes
  • Grass Clippings
  • Chopped Leaves
  • Peat Moss is recommended, but I am trying to avoid buying it. For one thing, it’s not free. For another, it’s not a very green business to support – bogs are being mined too heavily. So I want to avoid being a part of that. The wetlands need the bogs as a filter more than I need it as a supplement.  (There are developments underway to find substitutes for Peat Moss.)

The manure and hay do pop up on Craigslist from time to time, so it’s a matter of keeping an eye out and my back seat empty. :-)

My Garden Beds So Far:

have done my wet layers of newspaper and cardboard (using rainwater), a thick layer of mulch, a layer of coffee grounds and kitchen composts, and more mulch. I need to add manure (grass clippings, compost or more coffee grounds also would do), then a very large layer of hay, leaves or sawdust, followed sprinklings of wood ash, and a final topping of manure/compost/grass clippings. Then I can add some earthworms and let the garden beds do their thing until next spring. I can even cover the bed with black plastic once it gets cold out, to keep the inner heat level high.

In the spring I expect a nice, loamy soil that crumbles in my hands and requires no tilling. I might need to add some bonemeal or bloodmeal, depending on what free elements I am able to add to my beds this year.

Helpful Resources from Amazon:


Related posts:

  1. Free Starbucks Grounds for your Garden
  2. Fresh, Organic, Locally-Grown Garlic