Linda, About the leaves. In my experience making lasagna beds, shredded leaves are much better, but since you have whole leaves, if you find there are too many, take some off and mix a remaining portion into the soil/mix. You might like to try and create a leaf mold pile with the remainder. These are great, especially if left for a couple of years. When you get back to the pile, you will find great stuff to place in those lovely gardens. Black and crumbly. I discovered an old pile just last week - Oooooh!! :O) Mine are here and there behind huge boulders on the property. One of my neighbours has a humungous one. He set chicken wire in a circle 8 feet in diameter and just dumps the leaves in. In the spring, he just shovels the black gold from the bottom and in the fall he just adds leaves to the top. Forget the peat. You don't need to add more acidic content to your soil. I have the same as you in terms of highly acidic - it's a north east seaboard thing. Not a curse though. Highly manageable and most gardens do well. Any compost added as mulch in mine reduce the acidity a bit and always improves the friability of the soil. You can leave whatever is left in the beds you created (newpapers, compost, grass clippings). If you feel there's not enough 'soil' an option is to create a hole where you will plant, fill with soil and plant. In that way you don't have to till everything and you can expend your energy elsewhere. Any and all organic matter will incorporate itself into the soil and area with time and the help of worms. This works great for me.

1) Make a bed that has the soil that plant prefers and do not amend it. 2) Many people with clay soil edge their planting beds with a "Victorian Edge" a trench that seperates the planting bed from the lawn. That trench, for the most part, stops the grass from growing into the bed because grass roots will not grow in the presence of too much air. Filling the trench with something would be counter productive. 3) Never, ever just "dump" any organic matter from your premises, always find a way to recycle that stuff. Even "weeds" have taken up nutrients from your soil and throwing them away simply removes those nutrients which means you need to spend money to buy more, if you can. 4) All you can do is ask. Often you will be told no.

The reason the I turned it was because it wouldn't get wet, and I thought that was the only way to get moisture throughout. It didn't seem to be doing anything when I just let it sit. I will try to get some browns in there I guess. I don't have enough UCG or veg. scraps to make much difference. And I purchased the cotton seed hulls for the veg. garden because I like the way they mat and don't blow away, but seems like everything I read suggests not to use them on veg, because they can use whatever chemicals they want on cotton since it isn't a food crop. I didn't want to risk it. thanks, justsaymo

The how, the why? I haven't used this method for over 20 years, but I'll take a shot at it. What I have to say is about marginal soils, not the deep silt soils of agricultural areas, nor mostly sand soils. People who have deep silt topsoil don't often come here looking for help and sand is a special situation. Most all marginal soils support plants of some kind. It's not that they won't grow anything, but they fail to grow the plants we want in a vigorous fashion. A typical marginal soil has a thin layer of topsoil over a compacted subsoil. The subsoil is often seen at a depth of 6 inches and the clay faction of the subsoil is usually 20% or greater. Compacted subsoils that contain clay suffer oxygen deficiency. Plants differ in their ability to tolerate an oxygen deficiency, and most of the plants that gardeners want can't use soil where the oxygen is depleted. Such plants have their root zone restricred to the top 6 inches. Roots that do grow deeper are inefficient and add little to the plant growth. But you don't even get a 6 inch depth for roots. The top 2 inches are subject to swings in moisture and temperture that remove this area from the active root zone. Now let's look at putting a lasagne layer over such a soil. The first thing that happens is the temperture and moisture in the top 2 inches of soil is stabilized and becomes a part of the active root zone. Where you had 4 inches, you now have 6, a 50% increase in available soil volume. It's like having a plant in too small a pot and moving it to the next size larger. Both organics and clay act as a buffer to hold plant nutrients loosely. When pure water comes in contact, these nutrients are given up and the water becomes a solution of the the things plants need. Rainfall perculating through a lasagne bed results in a weak compost tea seeping into the soil. So now we have 6 inches of root zone and a source of plant nutrients. Not great, but a big improvement over the original soil condition. Maybe this is good enough. If you choose plants that have some tolerance to oxygen deficiency and space them wide enough apart to give each plant it's needed soil volume, the result is good. An example might be hosta spaced with mulch between the clumps. It can be a neat look and is in fashion. There can also be a delayed benefit to a lasagne bed. Depending on the severity of the soil, the line of oxygen deficiency can be sudden and hard or it can be a gradient over several inches. Where the case is the latter, the increase in biomass in the active part of the soil leads to an increase of worms. Because the upper part of the oxygen deficiency zone is not completly devoid of oxygen, worms now encroach this area. As worm tunnels open airways, the upper part of the depletion zone gains oxygen and the line of oxygen deficiency is pushed ever deeper into the soil. This is one of the cases where you should not dig the soil.Where this occurs over a period of years, you may achieve a deep active root zone where plants of all types can be grown with much closer spacing. The delayed benefit is not always seen. It happens very slowly, if at all, where the clay faction of the subsoil is greater than 30%. If this is the type soil you have and you want to grow closely spaced plants of low tolerance to oxygen deficiency you will be disappointed with a lasagne bed. The best method of remediation of oxygen deficiency will differ with each soil type. Do whatever is needed and you too can have closely spaced vigorous plants ....