What are lasagne gardens and what are their advantages?
thanx ever, serell

Lasagna gardening is simply one of several methods of sheet composting and the single advantage is that your "yard waste" is composted on site and you do not need to transport it to a compost pile someplace and after it compost back again.

Another advantage of lasagne (lasagna?) gardening is that you don't need such things as a rototiller (or even - for the most part) a shovel. You simply cover the ground with anything that will smother what is already there, put some dirt on top of it, plant and mulch. It saves on fertilizer and water (if used in the "square foot" method). And it is a quick and easy way to save the steps mentioned by our other OG friend.

I don't use the "Lasagna" method and I don't till my soil since I found out 25 or so years ago that tilling my sand did not increase the humus levels but Ruth Stouts year around mulch would. The "Lasagna" method is simply one way of sheet composting.

Hi, This is the first year I tried the Lasagna method on parts of my garden. I tilled as usual a newer part of my garden and the older part of the garden that has been used for a few years I tried the Lasagna method. I would reccomend to anyone trying this that they start in the fall to begin with if planning to use cardboard and if planning to dig down through to the original layer of soil. It takes longer for the cardboard to break down than for newspaper. I started mine this year with little knowledge on how this works so I began with both the cardboard thinking that would make good places for where I would walk and then using newspaper and peat and manure on the newspaper. I live in Zone 7 Eastern Tennessee Valley and we get a good amount of rain in the Spring so water was not a problem, still where I had stacked the newspaper too thick I had problems with the newsprint breaking down fast enough, and with the new peat and manure sometimes it would pack together and would not be exactly what I wanted in terms of letting the soil underneath breath, I was actually afraid at one point I was trapping too much water underneath the lasagna part and it was causing my leaves to yellow. I am not sure that this was the cause or not, but I think had I started in the fall and the material had more time to break down I would not have had that problem. All in all I would have to call it a success. I had fewer weeds and a much more abundant crop, less problems from soil borne critters than usual, I actually had less damage on my cabbage than in previous years and I am not sure that is what caused it or not. The only thing is I didn't have a good control crop because I was too busy taking classes "Master Gardener" classes to plant as much as I usually do. I planted heirloom tomatoes and potatoes and a few peppers and gourds, beans, that was the extent of my garden this year. I have some trees that need pruning so I can get more sun on my garden plot but after that I should be good to go. I am planning on layering another layer of cardboard, newspaper and then finishing it off with some old horse, chicken, and cow manure and compost mixture that I didn't have available to me in the spring and letting that overwinter, we mostly have mild winters here, but have had some really cold ones, we do get plenty of mosture and hopefully this will improve the soil. I would also like to introduce more worms into the garden. Actually this was the main reason I didn't want to till. I am not sure if the manure that I bought hurt the worms or not, I have not seen any of the HUGE worms that I had in the garden plot last year this year at all. It really cut down on the weeds, but those of course get composted. I plan to add a lot of lime this fall also as I have found out our soil is very acid. I sent a soil sample off to the University and am waiting to see what the general conditon of the soil is. I did not get this from my garden since it had already been amended. I know this is a long post and I apoligize. This is only a test... you will now be returned to your regular scheduled life...

Willow, I let the grass grow in the pathways. It controls erosion and make a more comfortable place to kneel and do the gardening work. I kinda like getting down "eye level" when I do my planting and having the grass there just keeps the clothes cleaner than kneeling (or in my case, laying) in the mud. Also less work overall. I mow the grass in the paths and have the mower simply direct it onto the planting beds. Instant mulching.