The numbers I found were surprising as I put together and uploaded my new web page topic about lasagna gardening being anti-green. The practice is contrary to sustainable living in many regards. It made me more proud of having just generously mulched all these years and dealing with vegetation in a variety of other ways.

Its remarkable how much water, energy and oil use is increased when the putting paper down to just rot, causes new product to be manufactured. Plus the pollutants discharged into the air. Its the other side of the coin of sheet mulching. So the practice seems completely safe for home gardens, but has other consequences in our environment.

Apparently some cardboards can't be recycled and are okay for gardens. Those may be the best choices. Like greasy pizza boxes. Guess pizza is not too far from lasagna.

: - )

M. D. Vaden of Oregon

I've read info from reliable recycling resources that newspaper is more valuable when recycled than if composted.

Seems that a lot of what is claimed to be green isn't quite so.

• Newspaper and cardboard sheet mulches can be effective for annual beds if they are properly
maintained.
• Sheet mulches can prevent water movement and gas exchange if they are too wet or too dry.
• Use site-appropriate mulch materials. Permanent, ornamental landscapes, non-maintained sites,
and restoration areas are not appropriate locations for newspaper and cardboard sheet mulches

Bboy & Botann, lasagna gardening/ sheet mulching used for weed maintenance on established beds is rare, and only a very minor use (I don't agree with it myself). It is usually published about by either people who don't regularly use it or by myth-busters like Linda who don't understand that is NOT the primary use of these methods.
What do you two use bust out a new vegey or ornamental bed that was grass or dense weed growth? By hand? A rototiller/ sodcutter?
(nice yard Botann!)

When there are tree and shrub roots beneath those smothering layers of old carpet, newspaper or cardboard those will be affected by the reduced gaseous exchange too. And the soil is a community, not a substance - you are smothering more than weeds and roots when you cut off the air (and rainfall and light) to ground you intend to use for planting later.

If you are getting a riot of weeds in your mulched beds you put the mulch on too thin, are trying to kill established large vigorous perennial weeds like blackberry or morning glory, or are using a too-fine mulch that weed seedlings can get started in.

The most Hellish perennial weeds are not going to melt away beneath paper mulches either.

Lasagna gardening was developed to create new planting beds without tilling, not for weed control. That some smothering agent (damp cardboard, newspaper, etc.) is used to kill off the existing underlying vegetation has got to be better than employing herbicides or gas powered tillers and less of a contribution to the carbon footprint. And I'd have a hard time accepting that the use of these paper products in sheet mulching or lasagna gardening is of sufficient quantity to make a big impact on the recycling industry and the death of trees as a whole. A single Sunday newspaper will cover a lot of lasagna 'real estate' and most of us accumulate cardboard and paper in quantities far more than we can or need to use for this purpose. Paper manufacturing is most typically a byproduct of the timber industry, utilizing the scraps not otherwise practical for other purposes (as is the creation of wood mulches, btw) or it created from tree plantations grown expressly for that purpose. - we are not felling down old growth forests to create the daily news. And consider the energy costs associated with recycling that paper for reuse - delivery by the consumer, collection, shredding and all the enormous manufacturing input required. Certainly recycling what has got to be a small amount of this paper (most waste paper is generated by business/office use) in one's garden without any associated energy costs has got to be at least as good.

Sheet mulching or sheet composting is another process(es) altogether and I'm not sure I'd lump them in with lasagna gardening. This is actually mimicking the natural way organic matter accumulates and decomposes in the wild - a series of layers of dead or dying plant and animal life allowed to breakdown and decompose with weather, soil organisms and time. Paper products again are not a requirement, but if they are used, again how much of an impact can they have?

FWIW, the paper recycling 'facts' not included in this treatise is that in 2008 a record 54.7% of paper used in the US was recovered by recycling - this practice is on the upswing despite how much gets used in gardens across the country. Yet recycled paper contributes only about 37% of the materials needed for new paper manufacturing. And 40% of all waste going into landfills is still paper. At least using a small portion of this for sheet mulching or lasagna gardening is still a means of recycling this product and creating a 'green' product - an edible crop, an ornamental plant or just plain compost. "Anti-green" is not recycling at all.

didn't notice too much of a difference between the two methods- although i didn't really do a controlled study. both methods "worked" in that they killed the turfgrass without having to remove it. both beds eventually became very productive with nice soft loamy soil.

arborist chips are a very light material to work with. smells nice (well, i was using doug fir chips, yours may smell differently). easy to spread, easy to remove later. good looking. arborist drops off chips- you can wheel them over or move them in big buckets to hard to reach sites.

sheet composting is a bit more complicated. the smother layer is hard to lay down in the wind. its a bit more complicated to get the material to the site.

i would lean to arborist chips as the better method.

Ding!

>sheet composting is a bit more complicated<

Ding! Ding!

Might be time to call it bologna gardening.

i let the chips sit there for a good year before planting something small and delicate. after a year of breaking down, you can get smaller plants in by removing the unbroken down chips and spot replacing with with soil/compost. you can put bigger plants in right away by just digging out a hole and building up a sort of volcano of soil/compost around the plant.

but for a bed, you can get your larger plants in right away and just be patient about the smaller ones.

if you are converting an area to beds and want to plant "a finished bed" right away, i could see some advantages to the sheets.

for vegetable gardens i could see some advantages in just skipping the sheets and laying 12"-24" of good compost on top of the turf.

oh, and one more thing, my best success in vegetable beds from turf was super labor intensive. cut out and flipped over turf layered a few sheets thick with about 6" of compost over it gave me a very productive squash/zuke bed this summer. i had to pull out a little bit of grass now and again.

Yowza!

BTW, I have been killing off large swaths of my grass lawn and replacing it with wooly thyme, sedums and other groundcovers, or in some places, just leaving a thick layer of chips. (Maybe some day my yard will look like botann's.)

I got a huge (20x40') used industrial strength tarp. Laid it out. Covered it with a 6" layer of wood chips... I only did this so it didn't look like I have an industrial strength tarp in my yard. After a year, I brushed off the chips, pulled up the tarp, and spread a couple of inches of chips back over the naked soil. I moved the tarp over 20' and started over.

I do understand that this prevents gas exchange, water penetration and a host of other beneficial processes. The soil seems to recover and sustain whatever I plant right away. I will be re-using the same tarp for several years.

There. Beat me up.

I'm trying to make a paradigm shift in my gardening. I foolishly planted big monoculture beds at one point of daylily obsession (hemerocallis ~ hemnancy) only to find they were vole food, then interplanted with irises and daffodils to make the beds more unpalatable, and roses, lilies, etc. for flowers, but these plants don't cover the ground well, being vertical, and I am finding after one bad year when I was gone for the whole month of June and the grasses went to seed, that I can no longer catch up with weeding, in spite of a lot of back-breaking work, or chip, afford to buy, or beg enough deep mulches, so next year I'm starting a program of planting native plants that will cover the ground, and make new sources of food, medicine, beneficial insect habitat, and nitrogen-fixation. I have some trepidations about what this will do to the vole population. Increased cover may cause them to have a population explosion. I'm looking for plants repellant to moles/voles.

The new paradigm I'm trying to approach is having a garden that actually maintains itself. The closer it is to a natural assemblage for this area, the more likely it will work. Botann's photo seems close to self-maintaining, I can't see all the work that went into creating and maintaining the natural woodsy look. But if there is a breakdown of food distribution, what part of that beauty can you eat?

My observation is that the present garden world pursues vegetables resulting from centuries of breeding, from all parts of the world, plants that need starting, growing, setting out, fertilizing, mulching, and watering EVERY year. The Native Americans utilized the plants that grew by themselves and were totally adapted, needing none of this yearly maintenance. I'm studying what plants these were, how they can fit into my yard, and how they can provide food even year round without all that work, and also bring beauty, bees, and butterflies into my garden. I may have some success or failure, but there is always something to be learned.

So I am going to gamble that densely planted beds trump mulches. One of my beds that succeeds has tree peonies, Helleborus orientalis, Ceanothus gloriosus 'Point Reyes', Hebe glaucophyllum, Nandina 'Bar Harbor', and some hardy Geraniums, as well as a few ephemeral species Tulips and Muscari. But nothing much to eat. Throw in some native plants with edible roots or leaves, and I could come closer to something sustainable.

But not all native plants are eaten by deer. Some are unpalatable. Many of my perennials are unaffected, even some listed as edible. That's where the learning process comes in. I can go to an university and pay $100's to learn about gardening or I can try lots of different plants and learn. My list of 1000's of perennials I have planted here over 16 years has lots of casualties but the successes make up for it all.

But all you have to do is buy and install effective fencing anyway. Peeler poles with plastic deer mesh worked fine to protect a small nursery I know of, some years ago. At the time the materials cost was about 300 dollars.

it really depends on what culture you are talking about, but as a whole, native americans practiced all sorts of intensive agriculture. milpa agriculture extended all the way from modern mexico to new england. native americans produced some of the highest calorie counts per acre by intensively working the land.

some cultures had less intensive agriculture, some more.

additionally, lots of plants that native americans incorporated in their diet were slowly killing them. lots of carcinogenic and poisonous plants were eaten regularly.

they are human beings, not magical creatures.

I think it is pathetic how little most people know about the power in the common weeds that grow in their yards (if they allow them to grow, that is) and how to use them. It is good to know, even if for a future emergency. But more important to me is to increase the diversity of the plants and herbs I consume, as each plant has a unique set of complicated chemicals it makes, and yet fits into a class of herbs with similar characteristics. If one plant in that group is not available, another one probably is. I have a Master's degree in biology and have been using and researching herbs for 30 years.:-) What is more "green" than having working knowledge of the plants around you and how to use them?

Bucks with antlers were observed bouncing off the black plastic deer netting at the nursery, without the fencing being damaged. 10' high peeler poles with the netting stapled to it.

At what became the Seattle Rhododendron Society garden on Whidbey Island the Meerkerks grew vulnerable plants inside small fenced corrals, with rhododendrons and other non-menu kinds on the rest of the property.

Yes, this is what I do.:-) I also use many circles of welded wire fence around individual roses, which they love, or groups of blueberry bushes, etc. Welded wire lasts a long time and is tough and effective.

walking around the neighborhood today i noticed two people who are sheet mulching their front lawns away. both of them failed to put enough heavy matter on top of their first cardboard layer. the november storms and high winds washed away and blew away most everything. couple sheets of cardboard got lift and blew over.

both of front lawns now look like they are just covered in garbage and yard debris. lots of exposed original grass.

I wonder if honey fungus might be more prevalent in gardens and other watered places than in nature as it is said to be vulnerable to drying of the soil.

eeldip- I was pondering your comment about the NA eating carcinogenic and toxic native plants. Of course us 21st century enlightened and knowledgeable folks NEVER eat anything carcinogenic or toxic by mistake (or on purpose)... bacon triple cheeseburger with fries, anyone?