Dotty don't know how far south i am from you but i will start my first lasagna garden this coming sept. I hope i have your success. i believe i read in the book that tomatoes do better the 2nd year of a lasagna bed. but i could be wrong. keep up the god work.

If only everyone in life were as nice and helpful as people on this forum. I enjoy it here so much! =) tiffy, Thanks, your link makes it easy. I didn't get much reading done yet because today was my cleaning the house day. With all of my ws stuff sitting in the kitchen, it makes it kind of hard to clean! :O Maybe I should have said self-propelled mower, but I call our mower a push mower because it's not a riding mower. I guess "walk-behind mower" would be even better to call ours. We have a riding mower but nothing to bag leaves with it. Btw, I also raise Monarchs. It's fun, eh? I would also like to raise other kinds of butterflies too to release them here at the house. I will follow your advice about the coffee grounds. I just hope I can get them to save them for me. I can imagine I'll get some weird looks. Ha. That's great that the place you got your UCG's from before will save them for you again. I figure it saves them from paying to throw them away, keeps them out of the landfill, and also helps our soil and plants. Karen, Yes, I think you're right. I know I am jealous! ;-) Oh, and mowing earlier sounds good to me. I would like to plant the lasagna garden in probably June when I'm done planting my other beds that are already ready to go. Mokey, Your method sounds good to me. I figure I'll just throw on whatever I have at the time and hope it all works out in the end. I'd rather just dump my scraps there right away rather than put them in another location first and have to move everything later. Anything to save on my back is the way I go.

Lindrusso, I agree, lasagna gardening is not foolishness. I started a herb bed two years ago using the lasagna method, and enlarged it this past winter, using nothing but cardboard, leaves, used coffee grounds (UCGs are a great green, BTW!) and soil. (I know, most lasagna gardening gurus say you don't need soil, but it worked for me). I let the leaves and UCGs sit and decompose over the winter, covered with burlap, stapled into the ground with those big garden staples to keep it all from blowing away. Then in the spring I topped it all off with garden soil, and planted tomatoes. I dug down through the decomposed cardboard to plant the tomatoes, and they grew like crazy! A real jungle, it was awesome. I am never going to till another garden bed. I've never used peat in a lasagna bed, and I only put kitchen wastes into my compost bin. You should definitely dig and bury the kitchen scraps to keep the critters at bay. I believe that burying kitchen scraps in existing beds is called trench composting. You mighty try googling that phrase. So, to sum up my responses to your questions....... 1. I am very interested in being able to use scraps from the kitchen. I have read that many folks compost right in the beds rather than (or in addition to) having a compost heap. If I do this, can I just scatter the kitchen scraps right on top of the bed or do I need to cover the scraps each time to prevent pests, flies, etc.? Don't scatter, bury. 2. If I do need to cover kitchen scraps, I would use brown material, right? Do you all keep a supply of brown material at hand for tossing on the pile when you need to cover things like kitchen scraps? Like maybe a large trash can filled with leaves or something? When I bury the kitchen wastes in my compost pile, I almost always top them with a layer of browns, usually shredded paper, of which I have many, many bags. 3. After I add a layer of something like hay or straw, do I need to top off with something with a little weight to hold it in place? Seems to me stuff like that would blow away! Burlap and staples works well to keep stuff from getting blown away. 4. What sorts of things do you all use as the very top layer when planting in the spring? I've read that grass clippings can be used - this appeals to me as this is the most readily available item because we have a large lawn and it's free - best of all. I use soil. And I don't mulch with anything right now, but I plan to start mulching next year with shredded leaves. When I used grass clippings, I too ended up with grass growing in the bed. 5. If I use things like corn husks or plant refuse (non-diseased, not weeds) - can I just throw them in and leave them on top or do I need to cover or do anything else to them? I would bury plant refuse just like I do the kitchen scraps. 6. Is there anything in the kitchen that is particularly bad for attracting pests (besides the obvious no-nos like meats, etc.)? By the time I get around to composting my kitchen scraps, they are usually pretty slimy anyway, and the only critters interested in them at that stage are earthworms and the rest of what you'll hear referred to around here as "the microherd." I hope you find my comments helpful. Alison

Dotty, Leaves don't seem to break down fully until summer here in western WA. What looks too chunky to be forked into the soil before planting pull aside to add back as mulch after the weather is warmer & drier. Slugs find too many hiding places in coarse matter before then. I suggest adding: --used coffee grounds --fresh manure without bedding --earthworms from the bottom of a composting project --soil for more microbes --sprinkling of lime Last year, we added covers to fall layered areas and it was a lot easier to work the soil in early spring. I think the materials also composted better under cover whether from compost action or the worms I don't know. Hope that helps!