I don't know about some of your left overs but The sawdust could be useful. I expect the soy and alfalfa meals could also be ok. You might look to see if there are any mushroom farms in your area. The one near us lets employees take truckloads of mushroom compost (horse manure mixed with straw/hay) free. We just pay our neighbors who work there for hauling it for us.

This is where I have looked so far: We do have a mushroom farm but they don't use compost. They grow them on logs or some such thing.

The local grocery stores give their vegetables to the food bank and pig farmers. The pig farms already have 1st dibs on
other sources of vegetable leavings as well. I am putting in my own stuff, though that doesn't amount to much.

We don't have a Starbucks or anything for coffee grounds. (Small town)

The state only allows you 50 lbs of seaweed per person per day. Any more and you have to have a license and 50 lbs of wet seaweed doesn't go far. Plus we live a ways from the water so can only get some when going there for other reasons.

Local landscapers use chemicals, mulch or compost their grass. I do have one person that just started giving me some of theirs. The neighbors I checked out use mulching mowers.

The town makes you pay to dump clippings etc. then charges a lot for the compost.

Any manure, no matter what from, is black gold around here with a price to match.

As for the left overs, I just don't like wasting things, but I am not sure if it would help or hurt a Lasagna bed. I just got a second hand copy of the Lasagna Gardening book. I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, but I haven't seen anything like those things used by Lanza so far. Nor have I found anything so far on line.

Seems a shame not to use them if it could make the finished product better, but I haven't got a clue as to whether or not it will.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated!

I don't think I'd have any trouble using any of the left-overs on your list in the bed IF we aren't talking about large amounts. The lime and the sul-po-mag are the main 2 I wouldn't want to overdo and the stone dust - a bucket how big? Bulldozer bucket or a water pail? ;)

But I think if you mix them all together (except the lime and Sul-po-mag) and then lightly scatter the mix between layers on the bed you should be fine. JMO.

Dave

The bed that I am building is behind a curved retaining wall. It is approximately 46 ft long 8 ft deep at the center tapering to 4 ft on one end and 6 ft on the other.

I have approx: 25lbs of soybean meal
10lbs rock phosphate
5lbs Sul-po-mag
3lbs lime
5 gallon pail of stone dust
pickup truck load of pine sawdust

Thank you for your help with this!

I just found this organization on line and thought maybe at least other newbees like me hadn't heard of it. IMO there is a ton of useful information to be had there. It is called: National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. An article entitled: Alternative Soil Amendments Summary covers soil amendments that are not standard agricultural fertilizers. It not only covered most of the items on my list, but others I had questions about as well.

There is so much information to be had there on a wide variety of subjects. What little I have read so far has answered a lot of questions for me.

Pros, cons, possible dangers of different amendments. A neighbor saw the beginnings of my lasagna bed and thought I was crazy to go to so much work when I could go, like he did, to the local garden center and get the compost he put on his garden. He raved about how great everything was growing. The compost he was using was composted sewerage sludge. The garden center said it was approved by the government for vegetable gardens, but I was very leary of it just the same. After reading the information on this site I don't think he would be quite so happy to feed the vegetables to his family. But that is just one persons opinion. No doubt a lot of people use it, quite possibly without knowing all the facts about it. Maybe they even know but don't care. Each to their own.

Given the size of the gardens and the amount of stuff you have, I don't think there's any real problem with most of it, especially if you mix it well and distribute it evenly. The soybean and alfalfa meals in particular will provide nitrogen to break down the carbon in the sawdust. Given the fine structure of the materials, I'd mix it all and set it aside to compost a bit while building the bottom layers of the bed with coarser materials, then put the fine stuff on top.

With a 46 foot long bed varying in width from 4 to 8 to six feet (I'm assuming that's what you meant when you said "deep"; I can't imagine trying to pile up a lasagna bed eight feet thick from base to surface), your surface area is somewhere in the vicinity of 275 square feet; the recommended rate of application for the sul-po-mag would be about 2 1/2 pounds for that area. So maybe add half of what you have, and save the rest for another year. You don't say what kind of lime you have, but 3 pounds over the area you have is about the recommended rate even for the most concentrated lime (10 lbs for 1,000 sq feet). The thing is, it may not be necessary unless the soil in your area is generally acid. Lasagna beds, which are mostly compost, generally wind up with a neutral pH anyway. Assuming you have a lawn, you might be better off spreading it there - liming is usually recommended for turf grasses, not for gardens.

You have this material left over after amending a bed as per a soil test so why now would you want to amend another bed without a good, reliable soil test?

I really don't have much of anything yet to test. The bed is under construction and the materials that I have put in so far haven't broken down yet and I have a ways to go to fill the bed. I am trying to get as many good things into the bed as I can that will make a good (semi)finished product one day.

Thank you for your thoughts demeter. Especially the idea to mix the 2 meals into the sawdust and letting it compost a bit. As for the lime we have real trouble here with acid soils. The front garden (to be) will take 2 years to get the ph right for planting. According to the soils test I needed to apply 160 lbs of lime per 1000 sq feet. I was told limit it to 125lb/1000 sq.ft. in any one year, so I can use the lime there if I can store it until next fall.

The soil in a new bed should be tested before anything is done so you have an idea what the base nutrient load and soil pH level is at the start so you know whether what you are doing is improving that soil or making it worse.

kimmsr what you are saying makes perfect sense. I thought about it when I started this bed, but it didn't seem like it would make much difference in this particular case. I had very little to work with, so I just started layering. I could be wrong, as I have been on many occasions. In this particular case, if I end up with any soil it will be made up mostly of whatever I can scrounge to put on in layers.

The retaining wall was put in to try to correct a drop off using boulders off my land and then rocky fill quite some time ago. We decided it was a waste of usable space, so little by little we took out some of the fill and used it else where. We don't have money to buy dirt so have to use whatever I can scrounge up. The first "layer" is just a few inches of clay (from else where on our land) spread over the rocky fill in the bottom and from here on out it will get whatever I can find free, or as close to free, as possible.

It took 3-4 years to make enough soil to build the front and side yard. It was soil that was originally removed to put in the foundation and road. I sifted it all by hand. It was more rocks, roots and stumps than soil. I only have a little of that left to sift and it will have to go else where. The land is mostly ledge and rocks with a "spritzer" of soil. This is a total rob Peter to pay Paul operation. LOL

I suppose this comment should go into a new thread but I keep seeing people ask questions about building raised beds and then people tell them get a soil test. Seems that there is a bit of confusion that raises a question in my mind. If a raised bed is deep, more like a planter than simply a slightly mounded part of the garden, then you are not really planting in soil but just in the amendments piled on top of the soil or essentially a giant container garden. How much can a soil test tell you? Is there any point in a soil test when building deep raised beds or container gardens?
On the other hand, most raised beds are really still just planting in the ground only with some extra amendments piled on top in which case a soil test is needed to know if certain amendments are needed.

A soil test, at the start, gives you an idea of the intial nutrient load and helps guide you in making decisions about what, if anything needs to be done to start that soil toward a good, healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants. If all you did was buy some "fertilizer" and throw it on you could easily be wasting your time, energy, and money since your soil may not need what you put down there and you could be adding to the pollution of your planet because those unneeded nutrients could simply flow out of your soil with the excess water into the ground water. The single biggest reason for both nitrate and phosphorus poisoning of our drinking water is excess fertilizers poured on lawns.
A soil with a good, balanced, nutrient load will grow plants that are better able to withstand plant diseases and pests and no one can tell if their soil has a good, balanced, nutrient load just by looking at it.

kimmsr,
We understand that part but that doesn't really answer the question of "How much does a soil test pertain to very deep raised bed planting?" For example a straw bale garden?

If you're making a raised be garden, the plants aren't using the native soil, but are using the new soil (or compost, etc), so the soil test doesn't tell you anything about the conditions your plants will be growing in. If you're putting in a raised bed because your soil is poor, the soil test might tell you enough that you could correct the conditions of your soil and not need a raised bed.

You have the soil the plants are growing in tested, not the subsoil. The only reason you would need a raised bed is if one of your soil tests indicated a drainage problem, if you put in a raised bed on soil that drains really well you will compound your problems. If you build a raised bed in the spring and dump some soil in it and plant then your plants probably will not grow well, but if you built that raised bed (provided it was needed) in the fall you have ample time to have a soil test done and amend, as necessary, that soil will be able to grow somewhat healthy plants.
Since amending any soil with organic matter is so simple there is no reason for a raised bed except if the soil drainage problem cannot be easily solved, and adding organic matter to most any soil will solve most drainage issues.