I may be completely offbase, but I think the whole point of lasagna gardening is to plant in material that is not completely composted. Some plants may need a shovelful of soil, but others are planted directly in the partially decomposed OM.

Strouper: Those materials don't break down much over winter in our area because of the cold weather. As it warms up that stuff will rot faster. In a few months it will look like garden soil. Keeping it moist helps but Mother Nature has been doing a good job of that without your help. But you can just plant right into that bed with no problem.

I generally use wood mulch over top of lasagna and it works well. It keeps it from looking like a garbage pile while continuing to feed the soil. Your lasagna should help to build good organisms and worms and all kinds of bugs, but you have to keep feeding them to keep them there (or they'll swim across the river to my yard for dinner).

You can add any organic mulch (fall leaves, wood chips, straw) that you have access to or that you prefer. Just avoid using plastic which would make the soil anaerobic.

Karen

You could mulch right over what you have, adding more material to what is already there. No harm in that at all and that is what organic gardeners do all the time.

Just add a few shovelfulls of soil where you are going to plant seeds. You will be amazed at the growth.

kqcrna, how do you continue to feed when you put mulch on top? Do you put food scraps in and move the mulch back on top? Is this a never ending process? I have one bed now that I just started and have layered pretty good and it is now about 15 inches high. I thought I could just mulch and move onto a new bed. I dont like the way the bed looks in its early stage without mulch.

scottrell: What I mean is that it really is a never ending process to build healthy soil. What you have done is probably great- for this year. But the organisms will eventually digest all that stuff. It would be best to "feed" it organic matter next year, and the next, and the next... If you continue to mulch that bed once or twice a year with some organic material (leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, compost, whatever) the bugs, worms, and microorganisms will stay there, fat and happy. If after you complete your lasagna you never feed it again, they will die off or go away to a place with an organic food source. It's a lifelong process, really, I think.

Karen

Thanks Karen!

Karen, If we keep piling year after year, would the bed become higher and higher?

I am thinking of creating a lasagna bed and am able to plant whole year round. If I plant different vegetables; leafy like kai lan or fruits like cauliflower or beans in the same bed with different life span, How do I go about it?

Thanks for infor! Engy

The organic matter breaks down over time. I've piled leaves, grass clippings and coffee grounds as deep as 4 feet deep on my garden in the fall. By spring, it's about 1 ft thick and by the following fall, it's pretty much all gone. If there's any build up, I can't see it.

We generally pile stuff deeply for lasagna beds. But to maintain the soil, it doesn't need to be deep layers on every bed every year. I just mulch my beds with a few inches of leaves in fall, and usually a couple of inches of wood in summer. Depending on what I have available at the time, I might add an inch or two of grass clippings to another bed, maybe straw in another. Deep layers aren't needed for yearly maintenance, and the organisms constantly consume it so most beds don't get higher or deeper.

Karen

Lasagna is mulch. You're just putting another layer on top. I use thick, non-wood mulches and I've never had it get too deep.

Hai, Thanks for all your reply.

I stay in tropical country and we don't need to rest our bed like you guys in 4 seasons country. Now, after preparing my first lasagna bed, the following time I think I will just put on top of it a layer of compost. I probably need to do it 6-8 times a year. So you think my bed will become higher and higher? LOL. Thats what I have been thinking.

I don't think it will keep getting higher, at least not that you'll be able to tell. The compost will continue breaking down and will leave very little behind. In fact, in a tropical climate, you'll probably need to add compost on a regular basis just to keep any around at all because it will break down faster when it's warm and humid.