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 don't think I've posted on this forum for about 2 years but glad to be back! I did a big lasagna bed on top of my native clay 2.5 years ago. I was so careful about it I was funny. It was about 2 feet high to start, the following spring it was about 8" high and through that summer - 2 summers ago it sank a bit more. Today it is even with the sidewalk and now I'm adding compost back on top and mulching a bit to add organics back in and bulk. The thing I love the very most about it is I don't even need a tool to dig in there, I can stick my hands straight in and move soil around, but it still holds moisture. Great great stuff. I used giant bagas of shredded paper from the office as a big part of my bulk plus followed somebody's online recipe. The only thing I would not do again is put 4" of peat all in 1 layer. It caked up and was clumpy for the first 2 years. I might use peat again but I would spread it thinly between layers. Now I've started redoing every bed in my yard the same way, one or 2 a year. Gonna take a few to get thru this but the result is nice to work in. I built a straw bale garden last year and had a totally amazing experience. Just awesome. I will never plant tomatoes in soil again - no need. No weeding, no bending, no bugs or diseases. It was great. Currently I do what I believe is called in genteel circles 'sheet composting'. I bury my kitchen scraps directly in the garden here and there and just rotate which garden I'm using. During winter when its no fun to make the walk across the yard to get to the compost bin, I dump non-rodent attracting kitchen scraps directly on my gardens and let them freeze, thaw and decompose. Great source of nitrogen added right back on top of the soil. There is nothing left by spring but the plants have all gotten a percolated boost of newly decomposed food. You can tell the tops of the beds are all black and crumbly from the compost too. Coffee and filters are good for this. Part of my spring clean up is raking away the uncomposted filters and hauling them over to the compost pile. I haven't fertilized anything but bulbs in a couple years. I have never been scientific about my compost bins, sometimes they are all browns like in fall, sometimes they are all greens - like garden clean up or food scraps. It all breaks down in the end. I do make a point of throwing some sticks and branches in there which aerates for you. I pick out whats left and toss them back in the bin when I use the compost. I also got a stick compost pile going in one part of my yard. A tree had blown over and left a big hole in the ground. I started throwing my sticks in there and leaves in the fall got blown in. It began to sink as it slowly decomposed. I threw in about 40 lbs of horse manure on top to speed it up. Aha! Dirt is on the way. Someday a few years from now I will have the most amazing planting area for some special shrub or tree. I don't rake or blow leaves anymore, I set my mulching lawnmower at a high setting and mow the lawn about every 4 -5 days in the fall and spread a bit of lime on top. The leaves are gone so fast its amazing. The quality of our grass has gone from total thin sparse junk to thick green and healthy with no added chemical fertilizer - well I do have deep core aeration done a minimum of once a year and sometimes spring and fall. This year for the first time I had a few yards of Sweet Peet delivered and hand broadcast it over the aerated lawn. gone in about 2 weeks completely and the lawn looks good even in our drought. I have a few gripes and chief among them is the new (to me) practice of selling shredded, dyed pallets as hardwood mulch. I have gotten taken 2 times with this garbage and the next time I buy mulch I'm going to have to see a sample before I buy it, or they are going to get my credit card reversed. Our local garden center had nice 'hardwood' mulch in the sample bins indoors, then they delivered this c _ _ p to my house. Its fluffy at first, but it packs hard and crusty and sheds water. Lord knows what kinds of chemicals are in it. Nobody at the garden center can tell me if this is pine, or if it was treated wood. All I know is..... I used to not shop at the Home Despot, but they are selling bags of guaranteed shredded hardwood BARK for $2.99 and it will be worth my while to go get that instead of shredded pallets. If it is pine wood - whats that doing to my already acid soil pH ? ARRRHGG Ah well, back to feeding the worms

We shred leaves by mowing them and they get collected by the bagger attachment. Doesn't look like an option for you. Unshredded leaves didn't break down very quickly for me but I'm in NH and I didn't mix them with anything. It sounds like pine needles mixed with leaves would be good. You don't want a layer to compact. I suggest you watch Craigslist which is where I find free manure ads. Best find was a guy who added kitchen scraps, wood ashes and barn bedding to the manure pile. It was nicely composted so I used this for my top layer in the spring and planted directly in it. Last year I made too thick a pile of unshredded leaves topped with about 6-8" of fresh from the barn steer manure (no bedding material). The steer manure solidifed/crusted so the bed didn't decompose over winter like my first one did. I ended up digging large holes, filling with better material and using this bed for winter squash. A second, similar bed, was used for tomatoes and summer squash. Worked fine. Keep in mind that lasagna beds attract worms which will help in the decomposing process. I have also added the perfed edges from computer paper on a dot matrix printer at work. I would be added shredded newspaper if I could find the office shredder that got lost in a move. Just don't use glossy paper such as ad inserts. I've been very happy with my lasagna beds. Two are in second year of production. Two are first year after being built last fall. Never till. We've had a long, cold wet summer but I didn't have any mud or drainage problems whereas some neighbors lost their gardens. Six feet is a little wide. You don't want to do a lot of walking on your garden because it compacts the soil. I'm going to widen the second year beds and split them in half with a narrow path for weeding in the middle.

I have read articles where people swear that their beds prepared the lasagna way perform better than others. Its basically planting in a carefully prepared compost/soil amendment pile. I wonder about the claims that worms will loosen and aerate even hard compacted clay soil as well as other methods. I get worms in my compost bin after a compost batch is ready, but I don't see that the hard clay soil UNDER the finished compost is now loose and wonderful. Digging in organic matter, then creating a raised mulched bed or berm also attracts worms, and you dont have to wait for the "layers' to decompose for months before successful planting. I know the lasagna gardeners claim you can plant in the lasagna bed after a couple weeks if its prepared just right, but it sounds like you better have a lot more soil amendments on hand to keep adding as the layers break down, and it will take awhile before you are working in several inches nice crumbly soil. It would be nice to read about one of our ag. schools or botanical gardens having careful side-by-side comparisons, before I try spreading all that newspaper around and try it myself.