Photo by Allison Gromacki
I am so delighted to have my first guest post! Thirteen year old Conner is sharing his science project experimenting with different types of soil. The soil for the lasagna garden in his project was from my garden. I’m so pleased to share his results. Conner, you did a fantastic job!
For my seventh grade science fair project I did an experiment to see which soil types would be the best for gardening. The soil types that I tested were lasagna soil, topsoil and compost, compost soil, manure solids, compost, and manure solids mixed with compost. I planted tomato seedlings and burgundy bush beans seeds into several plastic shoeboxes.
My question at the start of this project was, which soil type would produce the most growth? My hypothesis was that the lasagna garden soil would produce the most growth in the plants.
I planted thirty burgundy bush bean seeds (6 per container). At the second week, I saw the first sprout, in the lasagna garden soil. Unfortunately, at the time, they were on the ground and it was eaten by an unknown animal. A few days later, I started to see the other seeds sprout. The beans in the lasagna soil grew the fastest.
I also planted five tomato seedlings. The compost & manure mixture plant grew to be the tallest. However, the lasagna plant was more full and produced more tomatoes.
Other thoughts – I noticed that the two compost soils had more weeds, however that is probably because of the things that were originally put in the compost, and that may differ between gardeners. I also observed that the lower leaves at the bottom of most of the plants were yellow, however, the leaves at the bottom of the lasagna plant were not. I believe that this is because the lasagna soil retained more moisture that the other four soils.
The jars contain the water runoff from each plant/container. Lasagna runoff is on the far left (darkest).
When I watered the plants I saw that the water color coming out of the container was different depending on the soil type. The lasagna runoff was a dark brown color, while the topsoil runoff was a very light brown. I believe this discoloration is due to the amount of nutrients in the soil, and may be why the lasagna was the darkest of all of them.
In conclusion, the lasagna garden was the most successful and has produced the highest yield. I would highly recommend lasagna gardening to other gardeners.
PS The tomato plants are growing like weeds in raised garden beds.
PPS The burgundy bush beans were disgusting, in my opinion. 😉
Burgundy Bush Beans
This is the plant grown in lasagna soil!
