Hi Magnoliasouth, I just wanted to say that last summer I built my new garden based on that exact idea and got lots of tips from that website. You can make it very simple- we made one box- 8 feet by 3 feet. The sides were 2 pieces of wood, held together by a bracket and some screws, that were 2x6, so it was 12 inches tall. I did not dig or til and there is no need to. I put down a layer of cardboard first, layer of alfalfa hay (found someone close by who sold it for like $4 bale), layer compost, layer wheat straw, layer compost. Everytime I plant, I add a few scoops of compost. Mulched with wood chips. After starting the garden, we started a very simple compost area. Four metal posts with chicken wire wrapped around the edges. The compost has been minimal effort and at first I was worried about all the 'greens and browns' and percentages... we just put stuff in, watered every now and then and the compost is almost done :) The garden did great, I had watermelon (it grew out of the box and over the yard), tons of cukes, tomatoes, basil, marigolds, lettuce. The point of my long story is to advise you not to worry too much about exact things- just follow the basic idea with whatever supplies you can get easily and cheap :) The lasagna gardening idea mixed with the square foot gardening idea works great and makes gardening alot less stressful in my opinion, especially for a new gardener. You can plant one square at a time. Last weekend I wanted to plant something, so I planted radishes. You can plant like 12 per square and they are ready in 30 days! By then I can plant another spring/summer crop. All I did was add some compost to the top of the box in a square foot area. Added seeds and covered with more compost. Another great part of this gardening method is NO digging!

You're right, Nan, surfactants are found in lots of products. Soap and detergents are all surfactants - it's actually the surfactant molecules that surround and float dirt/grease molecules away. Guess it also floats the frog's protective slime coat away. Not surprising really. One way the issue around amphibians surfaced was when commercial herbicide was used to kill invasive exotic plants in ponds. The amphibians died - but not because of the active herbicide ingredient, but from the 1ppm surfactant in the herbicide formulation. For this reason, many people would like to see unadulterated herbicides (without other ingredients like surfactants) available to regular folks like us. At this time, for big bucks, professionals can buy the active ingredient in bulk, but smaller, affordable quantities are not marketed. No worry that toothpaste, shampoo, or any surfactants will be banned or limited - we don't ban the fossil fuels that are destroying the ozone layer, so what's a few frogs? In general, we ban things long, long after catastrophic results are obvious, and then we ban specific chemicals only when we have a method to detect that chemical - which is not trivial. Drinking water can legally contain like 2mg/L Total Organic Carbon, but virtually all the EPA monitors is volatile contaminants, which are testable in a GC (found in most labs), and make up typically around 0.2mg/L. So what are we drinking in the other 0.8mg/L? Mmmmmmm. And this attitude, my friends, is born not of a nuts-and-fruits birkinstok-wearing flower-child. It was born of too many years in a chem lab plus working with chemists at EPA labs 20 years ago, and finally standing in my own garden today, looking around and wondering what in the world we have done. I know there's harmful bacteria and fungi in the soil I play in, I eat fast food on occasion, and I know that loving strawberries means I injest a lot of pesticide, so i don't get carried away with all the dangers - if one thing doesn't kill us, another will, that's for sure. i just wish I weren't leaving such a mess for the kids to clean up. Want to get scared of your shampoo, look at the ingredients and then read http://www.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/depts/env_saf/msdspdf/sodium_dodecyl_sulfate_BP166100_Fisher.pdf#search='sodium%20lauryl%20sulfate%20msds' Here is a link that might be useful: one article from many

I love that magazine. You can get 6 issues for $10, which is a pretty good deal compared to the what you pay in the store. Lots of gardening, chicken and farming info. Here's the link: www.motherearthnews.com

hellerlake wrote ... "The arborist's chips I have gotten always came full of shredded leaves and/or needles which begin to break down immediately. There's plenty of nitrogen/organics. As for mulched beds that have not loosened up, what were they mulched with? Bark? Bark is naturally imbued with a waxy substance to protect the tree from moisture. It's suberized. It never really breaks down, and incorporates into the soil because of the suberization. Eventually, it breaks down into waxy, little fibers that form a crust on top of the soil. " An arborist friend once had a 25' tall birch tree-spade moved to his front yard. To start, the hole was half where the lawn was, and half in shrub bed that was never rototilled - same soil to start - but had a barkdust layer maintained for at least 10 years. The half circle in the lawn when dug, was pretty much unchanged. But old bark had decomposed enough to improve the bed soil. Down to 12" depth it was darkened some, and crumbled. It was handy to have seen the side-by-side comparison where the soil history was known, to see the change on the bark side, versus the lawn compacted by mower tires and bag weight side. Sometimes I've applied both. The last home in south Oregon, I put down about 8 truck loads of the chipped tree branches first, then laid barkdust on top for a more groomed look. 20 years ago, when we got about 30 big truckloads at my mother's 2nd acre in Beaverton, the wood chips with plenty of branch wood broke down pretty quick, which was nice. Thought it may be worth adding ... One golf course superintendent I worked under at Columbia Edgewater Country club in Portland, some year back, used to add fine barkdust to the sand for some of the new greens. It was because they decomposed - but decomposed slowly. The new greens were about 3% to 5% bark and the rest sand. His education was in agronomy. From what I've seen since then, the method makes sense.