Lasagna Beds - cardboard, raising bed

A thought, the cardboard that food comes in -- cracker boxes, rice box, tv dinner boxes, pizza containers -- can you use that in a lasagna bed? Printer paper? Junkmail? Old bills?

Is it possible to use too much paper/cardboard? Does anyone put another layer on top of an organic brown or green layer?

And what about putting timbers/rock/etc around the edges of a lasgna bed next to the driveway where visitors park? Just to finish the look a little?

Input?

Believe it or not, the pizza boxes are made with some kind of clay, so they don't burn sitting on a hot oven. I don't think it's a problem, just maybe they'd break down very slowly. That might be an advantage, don't know, I haven't used them.

I think I would go ahead and use them but only in a place I don't want anything to come thru for a LONG time. Then be sure to use plenty of green materials a couple layers above them. Cardboard & paper of any kind are considered brown materials and rot down slowly on their own. Grass clippings, dog, cat, or rabbit food, alfalfa meal or pellets, manure, etc. are green materials meaning they are higher in nitrogen and will rot down more quickly and help other brown materials to rot down too. Unless you are in a big hurry, the mix need not be exact by any stretch of the imagination. However if you want quick planting material you will need to add more nitrogen materials and just the right amount of moisture. Too much water and it gets mushy, smelly, and rots slowly. Too little and it is really slow to rot down. I hope this helps you.

OK, I have now a stack of paper and cardboard. I bought a bag of alfalfa cubes for greens (nothing else here will do!) but they were cheap. I have truck loads of pine bark mulch & mushroom mulch, and I have peat moss/perlite/vermiculite. Also, recklessly I bought 12 roses today (See me in the Rose forum for a laugh!)

1 - So I will first chop up the ground a bit -- can't hurt and won't take 20 minutes.
2 - Then lay down paper and wet thoroughly. (Layer cardboard on top but expect it to take a while to decompose.) Maybe put the cardboard around the edges of the bed and leave the middle with just newsprint since I'll be planting in the middle mostly...
3 - Then a brown layer of pine bark mulch
4 - then alfalfa
5 - then a brown layer of mushroom mulch
6 - then grass clippings or alfalfa or rabbit manure or
7 - then a brown layer of peat moss/perlite/vermiculite

I won't be able to help myself and I will have to stir it all up a bit. Cheating, I guess!

I've got epsom salts and fish emulsion (which should help get the process going).

Then I'm going to plant roses in it with soaker hoses on either sides of each plant -- I think....Will have to watch to make sure I don't leave them dry.

Am I off my rocker?

This may be too late, but if the pizza boxes still have that hint of pepperoni wafting about, you might get critters stirring the area for you. Just a thought.

Are you going to make alfalfa tea out of the cubes? You can put the wet solids down over the cardboard. You probably did what you're going to do yesterday. Disregard this if so, and I hope your roses are great. I vote for the east side of the trees, by the way. Should have put that in the Roses forum.

I used newspaper for a lasagna garden last fall. Boy, did I regret it. The newspaper didn't break down, but it does shred into small pieces and make a mess when you try to plant through it. I might do another bed this year, but won't use paper or cardboard, only grass clippings and dried leaves

Karen

Hey WeyMute you are right on. Though I am not a lasagna guy You have all of the proportions pretty well layered. Though I would use the perlite and vermiculite under the layers cause it is kind of ugly. My composting areas are brown and black not white or yellow for me. LOL