Sheet Mulching vs Lasanga Gardening

What’s the difference between lasagna gardening and sheet mulching? Here’s a quick look at the similarities and differences.

Let’s start with the similarities. In both, you layer 8+ inches of organic material (such as leaves, grass clippings, manure, wood chips or kitchen waste) on top of the ground. Both can be created on top of existing turf or chopped down weeds. Both include a weed barrier layer near the bottom. The layers decompose and leave behind rich soil.

The term lasagna gardening, coined by Patricia Lanza, describes the layering of organic material in the garden similar to the layers of pasta, meat, and sauce in lasagna. Her recipe includes peat moss as a key ingredient and newspaper as the weed barrier.  You can read more about the origin of Lanza’s lasagna gardening here.

Sheet mulching is a term used to describe a thick pile organic matter over a “sheet” that could be overlapping newspapers, cardboard, clothing or carpet. It’s a method taught and used often in permaculture.

Rather than a specific recipe, sheet mulching is a set of loose guidelines. You can use pretty much any type of organic matter, and permaculture teaches us to choose based on what’s available on-site or locally. Sheet mulching calls for at least 8 inches of mulch, echoing the advice of charismatic thick-mulch advocate Ruth Stout.

Whatever you want to call it, and whichever method you want to practice, the results are fantastic soil for your future gardens!  If you’d like to try out soil building through layers of mulch, check out our step-by-step sheet mulching tutorial to get started.

Sheet mulch photo by arpent nourricier/Flickr