Thanks...Well, ended up doing my own experiment after all my inquiries and research because I didn't have nearly enough ingredients to do the layers needed. I appreciate the input and clarifications though. :) I planted the front of my house where we had old overgrown shrubs removed (but stumps were left underground - what fun to work with). Of course I did all this planting up to about a week ago and then decided to lasagna style around the plantings (no walkway/paths - another fun challenge). So, I ended up doing wet newspaper layers around plants and over entire garden area, very sparse layer of old, dried out crabapple leaves, layer of compost with earthworms, layer of starbucks coffee grounds, layer of agway composted manure and then a layer of agway natural cedar mulch. This is all on a slope that I basically destroyed over the course of the summer by pre-weeding and causing newbie 101 gardening mistake of erosion waiting to happen. I only plan to add one more plant to this area and will just see how the soil underneath looks next year. I plan to water the area I lasagna'd so it won't dry out as it's on the south facing side of our house and gets lots of hot sun. Another thing I did was plant whatever my mom and I liked and now get to try to water what likes water and leave others to dry out partially (lavender). So, I planted: mugo pine-mops, 2 sets of monarda, lavender, blue fescue, silver mound-artemesia, hardy hibiscus, cheddar pinks, 2 whooly creeping thyme that are already on their way out, and today will add the dragonhead we just had to get after going to a talk at unconoonuk mt nursery the other weekend and loving the look of the plant. It will be interesting to see what makes it for the season/winter and into next year. If I don't over water them it will be amazing as I am one of those types and my mom is an underwaterer. Actually I'm working on the just-right watering type of gardener. This summer just had to be a scorcher with humidity to make it even more confusing. :) Sorry for the babble! :)

garden compost would have a much more diverse mix of microbes and fungus as well as micro and macronutrients due to the fact that usually different varieties of things are put in these compost piles ASSUMING YOU ARE REFFERING TO GARDEN COMPOST AS HOMEMADE....some companies make compost using only urea or animal manure for the nitrogen product. homemade compost could have composted bananas, coffee, all kinds of food wastes, plant wastes, animal wastes, grass clippings, and more. so i guess it depends on what you are more concerned about: Soil structure vs. Soil fertility????? i'd say that either way you go soil structure would end up the same, if you put it in the planting hole. although homemade compost would better improve soil structure if top dressed becuase more organisms would be pulling it down into soil w/ them, right?

Whoops! I meant to post this in Vegetable, not Vertical gardening, but feel free to answer it! Bart

Not sure if this is helpful, but I thought I'd share my accidental experience: I set up a sort of lasagna bed late this spring where I removed about an 8 in. wide strip of sod down the middle of the long narrow bed (it runs along my walk). On either side of the removed strip, I layered newspapers or cardboard and then piled up material, including some composted horse manure and some four way mix that I built up along the center strip. The layers on either side were just made up of whatever I could find to build it up 7-8 inches above the newspaper the keep the grass from busting through and build the soil up for next year. The idea was to make sure the beans for this summer had something that was already good and ready to go in the middle so that they could grow well and root down sufficiently deep. I think that I incidentally also filled the bed full of e.f. eggs/small worms from the horse poo. I had sorted out most of the big clumps of worms from the manure for my worm bins. I didn't notice the wiggler presence in the bed til yesterday when I was pulling out my spent bush beans (Which actually did quite well in this setup-- The zucchini that I grew with the same lazy method went nuts!). As I pulled out the beans and disturbed the first couple inches of nearly composted lasagna layers, the numbers of worms shocked me! There was more than I've seen in any of my garden areas. It was a very pleasant surprise! I also have a small worm trench set up next to that bed, so there is a small chance that worms may have also come from that, but I kind of doubt it. I'm interested to see what happens over the winter. Best wishes!