The Lasagna Garden Brigade

He is adorable!!

Hey you guys, if anyone needs cardboard boxes for their lasagna gardens just go to the local dollar general or what ever stores and ask for the scraped boxes. My daughter in law works at our local one and told me I could come get all I wanted. I figured other stores would also. Furniture stores or grocery stores or what ever you have close to you. I'm going Monday to get some more.

go to your local WALGREENS, when their next truck comes in... show up that morning and ask them to save you all of their boxes for pick up the next morning... be sure to go get them the next day or even that night...

I work at a Walmart and if you call most of them in the late evening after say--10pm, ask for the third shift manager and ask if they'll save you boxes more than likely they will. Make sure you ask where they'll be and don't be late if they ask you to get them in the early am...they will put them in the bailer since it's a big deal to leave trash laying about. If your store is open 24 hours you can get them at night. Most trucks are unloaded daily (and we do get trucks almost everyday at the 24 hr stores) between 4pm-1am and most freight is worked overnight.

I am absolutely thrilled to find this thread. Would be great if we could have a separate forum on lasagna gardening. How do we go about getting that started?

Recently started my first lasagna bed. A little different than most because it is a row of Wax Myrtle shrubs planted 16 months ago and kept saying I needed to put landscape fabric and mulch between them to kill grass and just kept procrastinating until it was going to be a huge ordeal to get the grass out and becoming very unsightly. Plus, we have the worst clay soil in the country. So when I read on DG about the lasagna method, it really got my attention. Only concern I have is the root structure of the Wax Myrtles, don't want to suffocate them. They were planted in 24-inch plastic edging squares and had been adding shredded oak leaves around them every few months.

Started by removing the plastic edging and putting down newspaper and cardboard covering everything except the 24-inch square around each shrub. Then cleaned out our huge compost storage that already had mixed llama poop, shreaded leaves, grass trimmings and kitchen scraps and spread it as the first layer. Going to go slow on depth to give the shrubs a better chance. In just one week, the shrubs have seemed to put on a spurt of new growth - unusual in 100-degree August weather in Texas, so I think the shrubs are happy with lasagna!!

This is how it looked before we began.

First day's progress.

If anyone has experience with Wax Myrtles, and just how sensitive their root structure might (???) be to having soil added, I'd appreciate hearing about it. These are the first I've ever had and don't know anything about them. Right up next to the shrubs I'm not adding anything except shredded leaves and so far have put 3 to 4 inches of the compost mixture on the remainder, knowing it may not be heavy enough to get an install "kill" on the grass underneath.

This is to be my first butterfly garden when completed. Will plant flowering perennials all around the shrubs.

Really nice,Petunia. Welcome aboard. Cue is a genious around here, comes up with all this cool stuff.

End of Week 1, started Austin stone (natural limestone) edging. This is the hard part but has to be put in right away to prevent waterflow from washing the "lasagna" right down into our pasture in the first rainstorm. Once edging is complete, can start layering up more greens and browns.

more than likely not.. lasagna gardening falls under the 'Sustainable Alternatives' forum category...

You're welcome to come and chat and show us your stuff on a daily basis though. You have the best looking wax myrtles I've seen lately. We just keep making threads when the old one gets too long.

Well, Excuse me.

ROTFL.. what???? well, its true!!! there is a thread or two in the SA forums on lasagna gardening already... lol... it would be nice.. but since the SA forum is a blanket form, i think theyll make one just for the LAsagna gardening.. hence th reason why I made this thread :)

This thread started out as a Newbie project. Cue started the process by asking if anyone had done one. I checked it out and sent youtube stuff. Cue did the research and compiled the list and we decided as a group to make one and share experiences. LOL

So now we have lots of people joining us. Everybody making beds. People checking in to keep us straight and share their experiences and photos. Everyone is welcome. We even have a new lasagna baby mascot! :)

This message was edited Aug 29, 2009 10:40 PM

and I'm waiting until fall (read October!) to start any of mine cuz it's too dang hot to be outside . . .

Hi , DP, it is good to see you again. It has been a long time. Hang around show us you Lgardens. You will be surprised at all the information here.

I had read a couple of threads by lasagna gardeners on other forums and was just surprised to find it here on the Seed Trading forum. Surprised and thrilled because I'm a real NEWBIE on it and continuously have questions. There are very lengthy threads in garden design and soil and composting, I believe. But those people are WAY beyond my stage of experience.

I apologize if I offended anyone asking about having a separate forum. When I first searched for "lasagna" I found almost nothing and lilttle by little I've found there's a lot of it on DG at various locations but just hard to find using search and just thought it would be great if cue_chik would be willing to lead a forum on it.

DNP

LOL, I wasnt offended at all! I just kinda know that the staff would tell me to use the SA Forum.. but if any of you want to ask them.. by all means, go right ahead!

I only started the thread here, as Seray mentioned, as a newbie project. Now we are all doing one in some way or another and its nice to see such participation!

it never hurts to try something once, experiment with different methods of gardening and I guess this is what I had in mind when i started the thread - to give everyone an opportunity to try something new and to educate some newbies.

You'll have to get used to me and my spur of the moment ideas LOL(take Gilda for example) I just like for everyone to enjoy themselves and have fun while learning something new in the process - just like our brug Contest.. its fun and educational at the same time

Creative you are Cue....no need to apologize for it though the spur of the moment ideas are one of the things that makes us all love you...

And we're afraid of LUCY of course. :) Morning all.

Yes, Cue, we do love your spur of the moment ideas.. Don't ever change ;-)

Morning Seray, Cue , Mechelle, Arejay, and Loca- I think this was aimed at me for "chatting" in the thread- Not Cue.

mekos.. i dont think anything was aimed at you ??? chat away hehehe...

Are you getting into trouble Jan? Come with me I know where there is more.....

It's all good 'round here, lol

Got the cardboard and the first 2 layers of my bed done today. I'm never going to have enough greens and browns to do all the layers. Is it 'cheating' to go to Lowe's and buy the stuff?

I don't think it can be cheating. It is brown or green right?

It's fun any way you do it. But it sure cuts down on all my garbage take offs. I'm learning to save paper to go out there and use the weeds that bug me-(like payback for being in my plants) You guys gave me an idea for the stumps in my field that are so close I can't mow around. And has poison ivy so I get covered if we weed eat, so I'm going after boxes to lay all around, and over, the stumps to help rot them away. Look at my white moon bush this morning. It had 6-7 big blooms on it all at once.(CUE -don't look at my weeds.) the plant is out there where we cut the stumps last year.It's going to be covered soon with lasagna stuff.

mekos! Those are beautiful.. and he weeds dont look that bad either hehe..

seriously.. it looks like you have the same type of creeping weeds i do, those darn things an root themselves in concrete.. impossible to get rid of and always a battle in my beds as well!

Actuall, I have that lowland loosestrife that grows out there and it's beautiful when it's in bloom and after it finishes we cut it like the grass and of course there is grass there but it's a mixture. I can't pull it out because of the poison ivy mixed in there with honeysuckle vines also so just cut most with weed eater and itch for weeks, but gonna start the cardboard out there and see if it helps keep the weeds down. There is an acre of this stuff and I just put a lots of brugs and cocks comb and yellow forsythia, daylilies, hygrangeas, well you name it and it's out there. Even tomatoes and peppers. Camelias ,knottweed bush,dogwood trees, a few cedars, plum bushes, mulberry tree, evening primrose-lots I can't remember the names. The dirt was better because of the tree leaves all over the ground so I went with it to cover the ugly ground between me and the neighbor. She never had a real yard until we cut all these trees. It was a joint effort. She now has grass too-hehehe, and half acre of tree stumps out her front door. We couldn't afford to grind them all up so we just started planting between them. Now, I'm going to try cardboard and see if we can get a better view with less work in weeding.

How much material do you need? I would have trouble coming up with enough brown or green but would like to try to make a few small beds for some veggies to be planted next spring. I have 3 bags of plant material I cut and pulled out and now am wondering if I can use this on the lasagna beds. It is large pieces of various plants and probably has some seeds in it as well. How fine does the material have to be?
Cheryl

the smaller to chop/shred the plant material, the quicker it will break down!

yard clippings are a perfect start to a lasagana bed! all ya do is just keep layering your greens and browns... no need to rush if you are not going to plant until spring.. just add it as you have it!

Cheryl, if you're going to be at the Arlington RU in October, I'll bring you a 2-gallon bag of crushed llama poop, if you'd like it. I'm going to cut off my "poop list" pretty soon. LOL.

The lasagna gardener with the most fantastic garden I've ever seen in a thread I've read on DG talked about cruising the neighborhood collecting bagged leaves in the fall.

I mow our grass with a catcher on the mower now. That adds lots of greens, better exercise than walking on the dreaded treadmill, plus saves money spent on lawn service so I can buy more stone.

Good place to get cardboard is air conditioning installation company. AC units come in huge cartons and the one I contacted was glad to not have to cut them up to put in their dumpster. Of course, you have to cut them up somewhat to get them in your car, so you have to be prepared with a boxcutter knife.

Know anyone in the construction business? Blueprints are great to use as first layer. They are no longer printed with that blue smelly ink but just regular copy machines. (Added benefit to me was getting my DH to finally clean out his plan room.)

DNP

OH my I wish I had a lasagna bed started. I just got thru mowing the big field out back and I have enough grass clippings to make the bed by itself LOL Joking. Do have loads of clippings though. Probably enough to have a couple of small bales of grass hay.

Hey cue, would it be ok to use the leafy arms of the castor beans? Mine got so big I had to break some of them off so figured they would go into the lasagna garden, but I know it's poisonous. I'm only going to plant flowers in there, where they will be. It would be ok, right?

Hey Flower, I need your grass right now.LOL

Well I wish I had a way to get it to you . You sure could have it.

Thanks bunches, my friend!

mekos, I am sure you should be alright as long as you arent planting edibles in the bed.

another good lasagna bed 'barrier is paper grocery bags. just fold em back up and lay them down.

also, my walgreens here carries paper yard waste bags... made from recycled materials and very vert biodegradable, they come in a 10 pack bundle for $2.97.. you could make one giant bed just out of one bundle!

Flower - you can save those grass clippings ya know! and add them when you do start your lasagna bed.. just remember, grass no matter how dry and aged is always a 'green' layer

Oh I am sure I will have lots more in the future. More than enough. LOL With this big field we mow there is always plenty.