new house, new beds

Here is the deal. I just bought my first home. It is the end of March and I move in next week. I can barely sleep at night dreaming of my vegetable garden and flower beds!!!
My new yard is a blank slate covered by annoying lawn. I will want to put in new beds (bermed) and a veggie garden THIS YEAR. I am not a gardening novice and I realize it would be easiest and best to create new beds in the fall. However, there is NO WAY with how excited I am that I can wait until the fall. So here is my question.
What is the best way? The idea I had was for my perrenial/grass/shrub berms was to cover lawn with newspaper and pile on top a compost/soil mix, plant the plants, then mulch around plants with wood chips.
For the veggie garden I was just going to rototiller the area (sod and all) and amend in some compost, then cover with newspaper, then another layer of soil upon which I would plant my seeds.
Do you think these techniques would work? Does anyone have any suggestions to make it better?

Yes, I think it will work just fine. I wouldn't do any tilling first, I'd just build lasagna, but that's just me. It's far less expensive in that your materials are simply newspaper (or cardboard) and layered organic matter. and you don't have to buy anything including soil or compost. It results in wonderful soil.

If you google "lasagna gardening" you can find a lot of information.

Karen

The reasoning behind tilling is that we have clay soil here. The last time I tried just layering on top I had really poor drainage. I thought I could get away with not tilling on the berms since I was building quite a bit of height in them. Do you think tilling will help drainage and root penetrationin my (non-bermed) veggie garden if I till in some organic material first?

I have clay soil, too. But I never, ever till. I have never used a tiller. Most organic stuff I read says that most soil life is in the top inch or two of soil. Tilling destroys the fungal hyphae and harms soil life. Twenty five years in the same house, I just apply organic matter, including but not limited to compost, by layering it on top. My soil has improved dramatically.

I'm not being argumentative, just reporting my results in my own clay soil. Everyone does what they find works for them, and many folks who till also report good results. I just don't find a need for it because adding OM works for me, without the added work of tilling. And I have had tremendous results from lasagna gardening.

Last year's lasagned area, no tilling of lawn and clay before cardboard> organic material layering. This was after seedlings planted a few weeks after building the bed.

Those same salvia seedlings, a few weeks later, in June.

Those same salvia babies.

Works for me!

Karen

Beauty, kqcrna! I applaud your not tilling and agree with you about it. But, we have to till only because our garden is too large to "lasgna" it totally. Maybe after a while we won't have to till. I would like to not have to use any machines on our place since they are so noisly and polluting.

dirttiger - I have the same problem with clay and also being impatient! I agree - your plan should work just fine - we do the same thing. But, kqcrna's idea is good too.

To be honest, tilling has made the top several inches of our garden soil rich and fluffy (a pleasure to work in), but there is still hard clay underneath. I have a feeling our small tractor is fluffing up the top of the soil, but either not helping, or maybe even compacting, the lower layers. But, this is our compromise for now.

For drainage, I mound the dirt up in rows and plant on top so the roots have pleny of room and the excess rain drains away. We get pretty good results. The raised plants are easier to get to and with a heavy mulch, almost no weeds. And the weeds that do grow are easier to pull out of the fluffled up soil.

Congratulations on your new house!



This message was edited Mar 18, 2008 2:58 PM