Do not use plastic over soil. Plastic over soil will cut off the exchange of air that is necessary to keep the Soil Food Web in good health. You are right that the simplest way to prepare that area is to cover it with newspaper and cover the newspaper with some mulch material to hide it and hold it in place, but this is not Lasagna gardening. Lasagna gardening is much more involved than simple plunking some newspaper and mulch down. In addition contact your local office of the Ohio State University USDA Cooperative Extension Service, http://extension.osu.edu/counties.php about having a good, reliable soil test done for base nutrient and soil pH levels and dig in with these simple soil tests to see what you do have and learn, from what you do have what you need to do to turn that into good, healthy soil; 1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. 2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up. 3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart. 4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer you soil will smell. 5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy. Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening 101

I think you have to be doing the right thing by watering a small spruce where you are right now, Herbalicious. Maybe you'd better not water every day, tho'. You probably can't expect very much water retention. The soil is likely to be very dry generally and from what I find on the web, much of the soil around Aurora has almost equal parts sand and clay - "sandy clay" they are calling it. That's okay to start with and should be able to be vastly improved with the addition of organic matter. But, right now, your irrigation water isn't just evaporating - it's going down and out in all directions. Hopefully, your trees will learn to follow it. A "rule of thumb" for composted material in the garden is to apply about 2 to 4 bushels per 100 square feet per year. I can tell you it takes a LOT of compost to go very far. Washington State U talks about 1.5 cubic yards per 1000 squart feet. Their specialists say that tree planting holes should be amended "at a rate no higher than 15% of the planting hole volume. The compost is not intended to replace the planting hole soil." I'm not sure if this about the same as garden soil amendment or not. I think you should do both - amend the soil with composted material and spread an organic mulch on the surface. The mulch could be something like wood chips and should be much cheaper to put down by the yard than finished compost or even manure. One thing I realized when I reread my earlier posting on ponerosa was I didn't give you a reference point beyond saying that these pines grow well where annual precip is above 22 inches. There at Fishtrap where the stunted pines stop - the nearest town of any size on out into the arid Columbia Basin is Ritzville. This town has an annual precip of 11.5 inches according to WSU. Somewhere in between, it gets too dry for the ponderosa to live naturally. There's a link to some windbreak info from Nebraska, I came across. Hope it's useful and that you can stay out of the sun with a pencil and paper at the kitchen table. Steve Here is a link that might be useful: Nebraska windbreaks

You ask a question that there are as many answers as there are gardeners. What I would do is mow the weeds and rake to the side as a compost pile. Then I would gather as many leaves as you can and then either lay down cardboard or newspaper as a base. Top the base with all of the leaves and either grandular fertilizer or plain household sugar. Wet and allow to set until late winter. The sugar will help feed the organisims that break down the leaves. The wetting will keep leaves from flying away. Late winter I would remove the loose leaves to the compost and till. You probably will need to make several passes. Some gardeners never till but only dig enough to plant the veggies. A version of this is called lasanaga gardening. Check over in the Organic forum as there are many good ideas there. In my soil and weather I need to get as much material in the soil to lighten it and our rain washed the sheets of material out of the garden when I tried it. After you have built up the soil nutrients no till is a good idea. Since this is your first garden I would suggest doing a smaller space the first year or so unless you are going to do corn, melons, and squash. As a first year gardener even with lots of mulch caring for that large of an area and keeping all the veggies picked is a challenge. Do not do what one of my blog friends did and plant the whole package of cucumber seeds. Actually he planted 30+ hills of the things. A visit to the library and various seed sites is good to see what is out there. Like all gardeners you will find that you will purchase more seeds than you can plant so find a dark container to keep the leftovers in. Many will still grow after a couple of years if kept bug free in a cool dark place. Good Luck

Thank you everyone for the suggestions! I think I'll stick with one per pot. I don't want to compicate things or cause problems for my plants. Another question I've got is concerning the price of potting soil/ soil-less potting mix. I think it would be cheaper to make my own, but I'm not sure what all to use. I don't want to use a gritty mix. With the heat here, I know that even with the short time between waterings, the gritty mix would start rejecting water. Do any of you have a tried and true favorite that is more inexpensive to mix yourself for the volume than buying pre-mixed potting medium? As for ferts to mix in, on hand I've got osmocote, fish emulsion, bone meal, and some kind of fertilizer that looks like colored salts. I cant remember the name, but it comes in a bright orange box.