10 years ago I used cardboard to cover my entire yard...it was a small one. I had a truck then, a better back, and a lot more energy. I hauled loads of mushroom compost to fill flower beds and the 4 raised beds I had put in for a veggie bed. The results were amazing. You will get to the same place but using your own stuff! I compost to add to my beds each year, but since I only have kitchen scraps, coffee grinds and yard waste, I don't get enough to make much. I covered my veggie beds with mulch and am pushing it aside, dumping my kitchen scraps and coffee grinds then pulling the mulch back over it. So I am lasagna layering to top off the beds. I could never have gotten enough to fill the beds to start with.

I've slowed down as I get older, because I can no longer lift and haul big bags of soil improvement material. My vegetable garden is four raised beds, each one 4 feet by 8 feet. Each is surrounded by cinderblocks. I put soil in each block hole and use them to grow garlic, herbs and marigolds.

One thing I liked about L.G. is the idea of making upside-down U-shaped support poles from metal electrical conduit. I have 10-foot-high supports in each vegetable bed. When planting pole beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. I run lengths of cotton clothesline down from the center rail and train the young plants up the ropes. Makes it easier to pick, prune and de-bug.

Our biggest challenge in growing vegetables is keeping the deer and rabbits out. Several years ago I got someone to install 4 by 4 inch, 7 foot high posts set in concrete around the perimeter of my small garden, and stapled netting to it. I also set up a lower metal rabbit fence, partly buried under patio stones to keep the critters from tunneling in.

Please look for alternatives to Roundup. It's a nasty chemical.

Another quandary is this mixture isn't going to be composted much by the time I should be planting in April. I don't know how much good black dirt (all red clay down by the house) I can scrounge out of the woods to top it off, and most of that has a lot of weed seeds in it---kind of defeats the purpose of the lasagna.

I should have started back in the fall so it could cook over the winter. Any ideas?