Hi Magnoliasouth, I just wanted to say that last summer I built my new garden based on that exact idea and got lots of tips from that website. You can make it very simple- we made one box- 8 feet by 3 feet. The sides were 2 pieces of wood, held together by a bracket and some screws, that were 2x6, so it was 12 inches tall. I did not dig or til and there is no need to. I put down a layer of cardboard first, layer of alfalfa hay (found someone close by who sold it for like $4 bale), layer compost, layer wheat straw, layer compost. Everytime I plant, I add a few scoops of compost. Mulched with wood chips. After starting the garden, we started a very simple compost area. Four metal posts with chicken wire wrapped around the edges. The compost has been minimal effort and at first I was worried about all the 'greens and browns' and percentages... we just put stuff in, watered every now and then and the compost is almost done :) The garden did great, I had watermelon (it grew out of the box and over the yard), tons of cukes, tomatoes, basil, marigolds, lettuce. The point of my long story is to advise you not to worry too much about exact things- just follow the basic idea with whatever supplies you can get easily and cheap :) The lasagna gardening idea mixed with the square foot gardening idea works great and makes gardening alot less stressful in my opinion, especially for a new gardener. You can plant one square at a time. Last weekend I wanted to plant something, so I planted radishes. You can plant like 12 per square and they are ready in 30 days! By then I can plant another spring/summer crop. All I did was add some compost to the top of the box in a square foot area. Added seeds and covered with more compost. Another great part of this gardening method is NO digging!

I feel nothing but scorn for Pat Lanza who stole Ruth's Stout's (and others) deep mulch gardening techniques, renamed it "lasagna" gardening, and never gave so much of a nod to Stout. That said : ^> ... I've used newspaper a lot and I'm always surprised to hear people doing these two things to it: A.) putting the newspaper layer on the bottom of their layers to prevent weed seeds in the soil from germinating. Then they cover the newspaper with materials that weeds LOVE!! and easily root in. Manure, sometimes people even recommend putting soil on the newspaper (!). The newspaper works best on the top of the layers where it's an impenetrable weed barrier. Then I put something fairly inert on top---certainly not manure or soil---to weigh it down. I use something wonderful that you probably don't have access to: seaweed covered with something pretty---chipped leaves or hay. B.) the other thing that kind of defeats the beauty of using newspaper is to shred it. If you shred your newspaper, any weed with an ounce of brains, arrives at the fluffball of shredded newspaper, elbows it aside, and heads towards the light. If you use layers of paper, the weed hits its head on the newspaper ceiling and that's the end of that. Although---I garden in Maine, so my experience with newspaper may be different than yours, but because of my newspaper mulch, I almost never water. If your experience is the same as mine, you're going to find that the paper stays moist almost all of the season. And when you water, it works like blotter paper, soaking up the water before it can run off. I secretly like rototilling, which I bet really is bad for the soil---like 'they' say. I'm not able to till here, so I've been either using deep mulch methods or forking in my amendments for the last 12 years at this site. Like the others, I like amending my soils with as much organic matter as I can get my hands on (which is never enough) before covering it with my upper mulch.

Count me as another who has had no luck with the lasagna beds. I find it extremely impractical for any sort of large-scale gardening. Unless you have a massive property to collect the materials from its nearly impossible to get the shredded leaves and the grass clippings (free stuff that you don't have to hunt down and import), together in the same place at the same time to fill more than a small bed. If you don't make it several feet tall so as to get good composting action going it takes forever to decompose -- especially on sandy soil where it doesn't stay moist or in cold climates where its frozen (and thus not decomposing), for much of the winter. I suppose it works OK for people who meet a fairly narrow set of criteria -- right climate, right soil, convenient availability of free greens and browns in the correct proportions, who need only a small amount of garden space as opposed to those trying to produce a significant amount of the produce for a family for a full year, and who are content to wait several years before even attempting to direct seed small-seeded crops -- or for people who can substitute money for some or all of the above. But my experience is that its nowhere near the miracle method its frequently claimed to be. Some elements of the technique are adaptable to my gardening needs though. Newspaper and cardboard are EXCELLENT sod-smotherer. And I make use of my half-composted, cold piles by growing squash, melons, sweetpotatoes, and such other items that tolerate ultra-coarse soil on them as they finish. But making an entire garden of nothing but partially-finished, cold-compost piles presents major challenges in accumulating the materials and the willingness to wait a long time before seeing any real return on the investment of time and energy (and money if you had to buy materials).

You should search for several previous threads on gardening under trees--also Google results. The silver maple is a real challenge, but things like hostas, bulbs, daylillies, some groundcovers and other things can work. Most success is had with planting in small pockets and with plants that tolerate dry conditions (hostas will do so once established and if not in sun). What you need to remember about planting under a tree with aggressive surface roots is not just the idea of adding thin layers and using loose organic materials (shredded leaves, grass clippings, fine bark) rather than dirt--although I would not recommend placing 6 inches at once--it's that you won't ever build up significant depth of good "soil" because the tree will extend its root system into what you layer on top of it. So your resulting bed will always tend to be a mat of roots and will not turn into inches of nice loam as will a regular lasagne bed elsewhere. So when you add a layer of mulch, it will be a layer of mulch at first, into which you typically can't plant much, and then a year or so later, the broken down part will be tree root heaven. Another unintended consequence that you should be prepared to deal with is that weeds will grow better the more you improve the soil surface, and will often grow better than what you want planted, so sometimes you turn a bare-ground, rooty area eyesore into a weed patch eyesore by adding more nutrient material to the surface. Also, the maple whirlies will take root easier. So, take a look at what part of the bed will be mostly silver maple, versus other, and don't plan on any kind of lush flower garden under the maple. Another idea to consider is using containers under the trees. Sometimes you can establish a groundcover for unity (tying the trees together) and then nestle in container plantings, both for height, and because by avoiding root competition you can grow a lot of things--shrubs, annuals, perennials--that you could not grow directly in the ground.