Pat Lanza wrote a book about what she described as Lasagna Gardening and maintains a web site that describes how to.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening 101

g'day phebe,

in the end all ends up as raised bed no dig garding, lasagne, sheet mulching (original term), no special magic in any apart from the need not to dig but some still do.

see our presentation.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden

Hi phoebe .... being new to gardening [smile] what a lot of fun, frustration, and learning you have ahead of you!

Have you checked out all of the many forums in the Garden Web? There are a gazillion different forums ! Don't see lasagna, though.

If you Google for lasagna gardening,...my goodness, what a lot of hits...

Here is a link that might be useful: Index for Garden Web forums

Actually, borderbarb, I've been gardening steadily for rather more than half a century.

I didn't know what lasagna gardening is, though.

Apparently I do it all the same, the last couple years, when I changed the veg. garden to all raised beds ("barrows") and built the raised beds of layers of weeds, compost, landfill compost, manure, more manure, whatever would get them raised! I don't dig them, either, usually: just fork them a little to soften them up for tubers and roots like carrots.

I'll read that 101 site.

Okay, I read it. The author seems like a very good gardener.

I've been doing just that, except I don't use newspaper. I tried that newspaper thing some thirty years ago when everyone was doing all that sort of thing, gardening with newspaper and growing potatoes in spoiled hay and so on.

But I didn't like it --- too messy, litter in the garden. Too bad! Because now we take the Wall Street Journal, and only use it to start fires.

I like "lasagna gardening" for potatoes especially. I never SAW, much less grew, either white or sweet potatoes the size that came out of those soft beds full of organic material and fertilizer! My husband says I'm now in charge of potato gardening -- he was doing that, I was just growing some for new potatoes so it wouldn't mess up his produce weight count. But they turned out to be monster potatoes.

It is true that one needs to keep adding material around the potato plants --- I did it three times during the season. Otherwise they poke out of the ground and get green.

"Too bad! Because now we take the Wall Street Journal, and only use it to start fires."

That is too bad, because there is perhaps no mulch more popular with the worms in my garden than a newspaper mulch. And there is perhaps no mulch less popular with weeds.

Keep in mind that Pat Lanza coined the term "Lasagna Garden", so a Lasagna garden is what she says it is.

phebe, I agree, when I use newspaper it takes forever to break down >>> too much litter in the garden. I like cardboard much better. It breaks down fast and I don't have all that litter. I think it works better to maintain moisture, too.

Karen