I feel nothing but scorn for Pat Lanza who stole Ruth's Stout's (and others) deep mulch gardening techniques, renamed it "lasagna" gardening, and never gave so much of a nod to Stout. That said : ^> ... I've used newspaper a lot and I'm always surprised to hear people doing these two things to it: A.) putting the newspaper layer on the bottom of their layers to prevent weed seeds in the soil from germinating. Then they cover the newspaper with materials that weeds LOVE!! and easily root in. Manure, sometimes people even recommend putting soil on the newspaper (!). The newspaper works best on the top of the layers where it's an impenetrable weed barrier. Then I put something fairly inert on top---certainly not manure or soil---to weigh it down. I use something wonderful that you probably don't have access to: seaweed covered with something pretty---chipped leaves or hay. B.) the other thing that kind of defeats the beauty of using newspaper is to shred it. If you shred your newspaper, any weed with an ounce of brains, arrives at the fluffball of shredded newspaper, elbows it aside, and heads towards the light. If you use layers of paper, the weed hits its head on the newspaper ceiling and that's the end of that. Although---I garden in Maine, so my experience with newspaper may be different than yours, but because of my newspaper mulch, I almost never water. If your experience is the same as mine, you're going to find that the paper stays moist almost all of the season. And when you water, it works like blotter paper, soaking up the water before it can run off. I secretly like rototilling, which I bet really is bad for the soil---like 'they' say. I'm not able to till here, so I've been either using deep mulch methods or forking in my amendments for the last 12 years at this site. Like the others, I like amending my soils with as much organic matter as I can get my hands on (which is never enough) before covering it with my upper mulch.

Lilyfinch, I tried a lasagna garden 2 years ago but didn't really have enough stuff (I thought) but left it and it's turning into nice soil. Of course it's growing a great crop of weeds which I'm gradually pulling as I bury more compost in it. I can easily dig down about a foot in nice loose soil now. Previously this was pure natural clay almost like concrete with weeds and grass growing in it. By next spring it will be excellent as a planting bed. The areas around trees where I've just put down cardboard and mulch are so much less weedy than other areas. Not completely weed free as we have a lot of weed seeds that blow in from the uncultivated and pasture areas but better. It also holds the moisture. Before I put the cardboard down I water the ground really well, wet both sides of the cardboard with the hose, and also water once it's down to hold in place, then pile the stuff on. If you won't have the manure till spring you'll need a lot of rocks to hold the cardboard in place. Plantmaven, your Yard of the Month award was well deserved! I always like to see pics of your yard - a real success story.

I'm attempting this with a narrow hedge of mixed camellias, but I'm just tying the branches together at points of intersection, weaving them together as they grow. Grafting would not be practical in this case, but it is a cool effect with larger trees if you can achieve it.

I've never tried this, however I would offer the following points: 1. Normally I've seen these types of trellises propped up against a house, or another strong structure. If you did this, half of the plant would likely be in shade, which is less than ideal. This could lead to the shaded area of the plant not drying properly, which is really bad for tomatoes. 2. If you are using the trellis out in the open, I believe it would be OK, however tomato plants can get very heavy when wet and weighed down with tomatoes, so I suspect you would need to support both ends with something else (possibly fence stakes). 3. Since the trellis is 2 dimensional (as opposed to a cage which is 3 dimenstional), you will constantly need to keep pushing the vines back and forth through the trellis structure. Good Luck.