I use the lasagna method to create new planting beds which requires no digging or tilling. You make your layers on top of the plot of ground that you want to create a bed in and once you have it built you can plant in it right away.

Penny

To second Penny1947's suggestion, I would highly recommend covering the existing sod with layers of newspaper/mulch/compost, etc. (read up on the lasagna method) and then "voila" you have a bed suitable for planting with a very small amount of effort.
My days of digging out sod are O V E R, this method has totally changed how I garden, it's SO MUCH EASIER.

Two years ago my DH spent an entire week-end digging sod out of a bed on the west side of the house and then another week-end building it up and making it usable for planting. Last year after I spent a total of 4 hours building a lasagna bed and planting it out. I was done by noon and had the rest of the day to putter around.

penny

thanks, penny & gentian! penny -- i can relate to your DH's experiences. we're only up at the house on the weekends, and i hate passing two weekends getting the ground ready for the plants. i'm gonna research some more on lasagna beds (all this talk of lasagne is making me hungry...). i'll try to get some old copies of the post from the deli --- i like the idea of something beautiful growing from the pages of the post (i just hope it doesn't poison the soil -- ha ha).

i'm going to do a search on google now. does anyone have good web sites? will this work well with roses?

thank you so much!!!
--robbie--

The problem with lasagna beds is in the math. Perennials need at least six inches of bed. They are happier with a foot. The decomposition of the material shrinks by at least half. So in order to have a foot of bed above hard packed clay/rock, you need two feet of raw materials.

2 x 20 x 28 = 1120 cu ft. or about 41.5 yards of raw material, or about four and a half big dump trucks.

If you want it done fast and reasonably well, find a landscaper with either a small backhoe or a Bobcat, and tell them to dig down about 18". They'll miss spots and rocks, but the result isn't bad. A tiller, even a monster Troy-Bilt won't get down 6" in our soil, and cannot deal with the rocks. Best way I've found is old fashioned double-digging. You end up with a rock pile the size of a Volkswagen, but the rocks are no longer in the garden beds.

Given that this is a weekend place, I'd strongly recommend against raised beds. They dry out noticably faster than surface beds, and there will be summers when it will make a big difference. Yes, you can put in automatic irrigation, but don't even think about that unless you know you have a very good well. (I'm assuming well here) Having a well redug isn't a laughing matter for a lot of reasons.

Mad_Gallica
i found that my lasagna beds dried out much slower than my regular raised bed. i soak it down really well and it is usually good to go for the rest of the week. My regular raised beds need constant attention.

Penny

Penny, to my mind once a week watering *is* constant attention. That's what the waterhogs, the windowboxes and the vegetable raised beds get. The real garden beds only tend to get watered if there are a lot of new additions. It's surprising how well they can even handle extended droughts like the ones we had fairly regularly a few years ago.

maybe I am overcautious especially early on in the season. i know that when we take off for a week to 10 days nothing gets watered and the plants are all doing well when we get back. Last year I did have a lot of new plants that i had wintersowed so their first year they were getting established. maybe I will not have to drag that hose out as much this year. i am also hoping to have a few more natives this year which I know will require a lot less care once established.

penny

Since it was so nice today (two days in a row!) I went outside and shoveled snow from around two lilac bushes and one mock orange bush and laid down newspaper in prep for lasagna beds. They'll be a nice spot for some of my Winter Sown babies
(temporary or permanent:-)

Well, aren't you the ambitious little gardener! You can come to my house anytime and shovel that snow away for more lasagna beds...it is too cold for me to get out there.

Penny

I had a similar situation at a weekend house a few years ago. I only had every other weekend to do the work.

Rather than a straight lasagna method I simply got several bales of hay and laid it down over the area I wanted to turn into a garden (loose 8" layers). The hay smothers the grass and within a couple of weeks and then the hay begins to break down adding fantastic nutrients to the soil. I have never seen so many earthworms as I saw when I peeked under my hay layer.

You can then either turn the soil or leave the hay in place and plant into it a la the lasagna method

The reason I went with this method is my aesthetic aversion to layers of newspaper in my garden. If the sheets of paper pack together and are wet, they can take a remarkably long time to disintegrate.

Good luck

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of lasagna method supporters here. I am another one who races upstate on weekends to garden, so time is truly (alas) of the essence when I finally get my hands in the dirt.

In my area (Delaware Co.) the soil is described as "two stones for every dirt," making digging even the smallest bed a trial. I used the lasagna gardening book and found the method worked very nicely for a vegetable garden last summer. I rarely had to water--the rain took care of the garden very nicely all summer long, though I did do some supplementary watering when the seedlings were starting. But for me that was a pleasure and not terribly time consuming in my two 3 foot x 20 foot raised beds.

Once it got warm enough, I mulched the bed with straw, which seemed to keep things nice and damp. I also laid "books" of hay from square bales down in the narrow walkways between the beds, for aesthetic pleasure and to keep down weeds. In early fall, I gently raked up all the hay from the walkways (rich with worms and a few beautiful red-bellied snakes)--actually, I could almost "peel" the walkways by hand since I'd laid "books" of hay. I used these as layers for yet another lasagna bed I will plant this spring (after releasing the snakes of course.)

Aside from not digging (and thus not disturbing the worms, fungi, and other delicate denizens of the "soil community"), I really like the recycling aspect of this gardening method. Since I was working in an overgrown field, for my bottom layer I used corrugated cardboard boxes I'd collected during the course of the year. A real find was a huge corrugated box from a water heater I'd had delivered--I used it as the first layer of an asparagus garden bed I created last fall and intend to plant this year. It pleases me to find a good use for these materials and I was surprised at how quickly they broke down (I didn't use newspapers much.)

The more I read about the complex nature of the underground community, the happier I am to avoid digging and tilling. My back is happier, too!

I also am a big supporter of the lasagna gardening method and have been using it for several years. I also just attended a seminar on Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich,PhD, which is basically a modified version of Patricia Lanza's lasagna gardening and can be planted right away, whereas the lasagna method you are supposed to wait (though I never do). Lee goes one step further by stating that the earth should not be disturbed or tilled because that wakes up many weed seeds and also causes too much oxygen to be incorporated into the soil, which in turn breaks down the organic matter faster, therefore making us have to work harder by adding more organic matter and weeding more often. He also talks alot about watering. His book "Weedless Gardening" is less than $10 and definately worth the read. I have just started it and am finding that I have been doing many of the things he describes without even realizing it was a "good" thing to do. My gardens are still very young and I am confident they will really thrive this year.

www.leereich.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening