Lazy Gardening Series: Part 2: Soil Health

Welcome to the second part of our Lazy Gardening Series; a series that challenges everything you know about working hard in the garden. If you missed the first part to our series, read it here. 

I'm convinced that working with nature for our food is top priority, so these tips are all organic, don't require you to spend tons of money, and absolutely possible no matter your experience level. Let's get growin'!

Part 2: Healthy soil, Healthy plants

If you get one thing right in your garden, it should be your soil. It’s literally the foundation of your new garden & is the medium in which life is created. 

If your soil has been tilled, sprayed, or was previously turf grass, you may experience low crop production, miscolored leaves, soil-borne fungal disease, runoff, lack of soil life (earthworms,) and other signs of weak soil. 

The good news is unhealthy soil can be cured with an increase in diversity. Your solution is inexpensive and simple as pie. Let's go on and create a personalized soil health plan for your specific garden. 

Step 1: Assessing your current soil profile

New Gardeners/ "Starting over" Gardeners

   Starting a new garden can be overwhelming to say the least. For both in-ground and raised bed gardeners, the decisions are endless. Use a rototiller? Do soil testing? Should I check the pH? How to amend my soil? What fill do I need for the bed? And what ratios are needed to make my own soil? 

    Let me talk you off the ledge here. All you need for your first-year garden is diversity in plants, bugs, and soil nutrients. As you'll learn throughout this series, we can really simplify our garden habits by keeping those three things top of mind. Enter Lasagna Mulching. 

    Lazy Lasagna Mulching

Best done in March or April to be ready by our last frost date. Lasagna mulching is done by layering a bunch of decomposable materials on top of your soil. These decomposable materials host tons of microbes and nutrients that plants need and love. By watering your "mulch", you're helping it break down into a soil-like material that will support your garden all summer long. 

1. 

   
   

   Young Urban Farmers- Lasagna Mulching

   Lay down enough pieces of cardboard or brown paper to cover the entire garden space including walkways
2. Pile 1-3 feet of organic material (compost, leaves, small sticks, soil, lawn clippings) on top of your bed space (or in raised beds.) Optional: cover with straw.
3. Mulch your walkways with wood chips
4. Water intensively for the first few weeks to encourage decomposition
   
5. When you're ready, plant directly into your mounds

You can get many materials for free by spending a nice spring day outside in the yard, in the woods, or by asking your neighbors to clean up their yard for them! Everyone loves a helpful neighbor. 

Don't fret. If you prefer to keep lasagna in your supper and not your garden, I use this fill ratio for raised beds: 

• 40% Compost 
• 20% Coarse Sand
• 40% Topsoil

Established gardens

Assessing soil health in established gardens can lead one to believe that there's expensive tests and amendments going to be required... but that can't be further from the truth. 

1. Think back on last year's garden. Look at pictures if you have to. Did you get the crop you expected? Was there any excessive yellowing of leaves? Did you feel like you were watering all the time? Was your crop susceptible to any disease or pests? What DID work in your garden? 
2. Look out at your garden now. Is it bare? Are you using a cover crop? Did you cover it over the winter? Do you have some perennial fruits, veggies, or herbs? 

Your general answers to these questions should guide you to recommendations made below. 

Step 2: No Bare Soil- Cover up!

Bare soil is the worst. Weed seeds can easily plop in, windy days can blow your topsoil away, weather conditions can erode & kill nutrients and microbes we love, and water evaporates quickly. Overall, 0/10. This step has been the most pivotal in my lazy gardening journey, and it's super easy to do. 

Mulch

Straw and wood chips are some of my BFF's. Mulching your garden prevent weeds, retains moisture, and encourages nutrient cycling. 

• Every spring, mulch your garden pathways with cedar or un-treated & un-colored mulch. The next spring, your mulch pathways will be mostly decomposed. Rake the decomposed mulch into your planting beds to cycle some nutrients. Apply new mulch to your pathways, rinse, and repeat!
• Before winter, cover your garden with straw or a cover crop of your choice. 

Plant Intensively

Square foot gardening? More like square inch gardening. Seeds for leafy greens and root vegetables can be mixed into sand and sprinkled around your beds to fill in bare spots. Thin out later.

Or tuck herbs and annual flowers in bare spots of the garden to attract beneficial insects & repel pests. Read more about this in the first part of our series. 

Plant year-round

Take advantage of the whole planting season by always having something growing. 

• March-April you can plant cole crops like leafy greens, peas, potatoes, and onions.
• In May you can plant your summer crops like peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and herbs.
• July- August you can plant a second round of cole crops like beans, beets, brussels sprouts, or broccoli.
• September, plant some garlic for harvest next year. By keeping things in the ground, you'll keep soil covered and in-use. 

Step 3: Plants to the rescue!

Just like our superhero bugs, we also have superhero plants. For soil health, we focus on roots and nitrogen. 

Roots

An important part of soil health is the roots in the system. Roots prevent erosion and allow pathways for air & water, improving the soil structure. 

• Regularly rotate root crops like carrots, turnips, onions, garlic, and potatoes
• Consider perennials like rhubarb, asparagus, chives, or echinacea
• Use mushrooms like wine caps, oyster, or chicken of the woods to create underground networks of mycelium
• When removing a spent plant from the garden, cut it off at the base, leaving the root system to decompose in the ground.  

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a necessary soil component that is quickly depleted every year in your garden. Our friends, nitrogen-fixing plants, convert nitrogen in the air to a form usable to plants through nodules in their roots. Using them in a garden design is a no-brainer. 

• When these plants are spent, chop & drop the foliage of the plant to let the nitrogen break down into the soil. Plant beans and peas in different beds every year for best results.

Step 4: Compost

Great gardener, you should know, compost is gold in garden currency. Compost is something you can make at home to amend your garden soil, improving its structure, nutrient content, and water retention.

Composting is just a fancy word for strategic decomposition of organic material. This process should sound familiar because Lazy Lasagna Gardening is just really fast composting. Creating compost at home is a year-round process, but it’s easy as cake. 

The two components of compost are carbon and nitrogen (aka dead and dying organic material.) By throwing a mix of dead and dying things into a pile in your yard, you can eventually amend your garden soil with your own compost! 

Stay tuned to our deep dive on compost, coming out next Wednesday, 3/18/26. I'll share how my at-home compost saved me almost $300.00 last year!

To use your homemade compost: 

• Before winter, apply a layer of compost to your planting beds, 1-3" thick. Cover with straw/ mulch. 
• In spring, apply a layer of compost to your planting beds, 1-3" thick. Cover with straw/ mulch. 
• As you are planting, add some compost in your hole for a direct shot of nutrients to your baby plant. 

 

And that's it folks! You have multiple actionable steps to improve your garden's soil health this year, without breaking the bank. Part of lazy gardening is looking at how nature does things. Compost, mulching, diversity, are all things that happen naturally in nature. By applying this logic to our gardens, they'll be much more resilient without your blood, sweat, and tears. 

If you have any further questions, stop by our store in Diamond and ask for Courtney, or email info@sunshinegardencenter.com. Stay tuned for Part 3: Garden bed planning, coming out on April 29th, 2026.. right in time for summer!