Are you thinking of lasagna beds maybe? Search that.

I guess you could do just cardboard then soil, but I've never done it. My guess is you'd have to use an awful lot of soil to have something to plant in this year.

Karen

It wasn't lasagna beds. I seriously could be making this up. Sometimes I think my brain is fried! Too many kids and too many seedlings!

Jessica

The cardboard will break down and let your plants grow through after a month or two, I'm guessing, but possibly longer. Longer if the soil is kept dry. Will you be planting seedlings, or larger plants? I would just imagine the size pot that the plant would be happy in for 2 or 3 months, and make the soil that deep. After that, the roots should be able to get through the cardboard. If I were putting little 2" tall perennial seedlings in, to play it safe I'd put in 6-8 inches of soil and hope it wouldn't settle to less than 5 inches.

Using Tansy Moon's lasagna-in-a-cardboard-pan method may work well for your soil idea; she cut big boxes down to the right height, and filled them with her stuff--I think she used lasagna bed ingredients and sand. You could do the same, or just use soil. The sides will keep your several inches of soil from washing away from your growing area, and allow you to plant to the edge of your new beds. Putting in that much soil may be expensive, so if you can gather up the ingredients for lasagna beds, you could just make pockets of soil where you put your plants.

Hi, Jessica,

Could this be the post you've been looking for?

~Kristi

Here is a link that might be useful: Donn's Instant Beds

No, I have that one printed out in my garden journal. I wish I would have printed the other one I am thinking about. It may just be something I have dreamed up....

Thanks anyway! Jessica

the only one i could think of was the lasagna bed or donns instant beds. i think i do remember reading something about what your talking about. now we just have to google and type in the "right words" LOL HEE HEE that's always my downfall!!! LOL

Jessica-I laid cardboard on the ground before the grass/weeds started growing, I satuarated the cardboard & laid about 5-6" of woodchips. At that time my lilly's were coming up so I cut the cardboard to go around them. I haven't plnated my seedlings there yet but plan to do so in a week or two. Someone here told me the ground wouldn't warm up because the cardboard/chips is insulating the ground keeping it from warming up. They also said to move the chips , dig my hole through the cardboard and let the ground warm before I plant, so I will be doing this soon, as soon as I figure out where I'm planting what :) Hope this helps!

also are you thinking of square foot gardening?? its kinda sorda like that?? i imagine if you laid like 6 inches of dirt on that it'd be ok, but you'd have to make sure that the dirt wouldnt go anywhere. OOPs almost forgot how to spell that!!! http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/sqfoot/ check this out and see. LOL

Jessica: You are not making it up. I read that post too, and there were pics. of plantings done immediately after. I will search for it. I may have saved it. There is another version of the same thing that I have. I will e-mail it to you.

So basically, wintersowing made you run out of flower beds, right? Join the club!

I'm an advocate of lasagna beds myself. No digging sod, no expense. I use what is basically waste (hate to say garbage), free, easy, yields great soil.

Karen

Thanks for helping remember and letting me atleast think that I am not going crazy. You guys are the best! I really need to do this lasagna thing. You have all inspired me. (Again!) I hope someday my entire lot will be mostly flower beds with some small sod paths winding through.

Many Thanks, Jess

northerner_on,
If you do find the post or link I'd like to have it too. I did do one lasagna bed, but would like more beds now that I have tons of babies to plant out.

thanks,
Pam

I don't think there is an "easy" instant bed, unless you pay somebody else to dig it for you! If I want an instant bed, it's a lot of hard work, digging out the invasive plants, roots, rocks, etc. I used Donn's method to expand the edge of one bed this year, but it was only grass I was flipping over, that is not the case for most of the beds.

I am also continuously making lasagne beds, which are definitely the easiest way to make a new bed, but I am smothering Vinca and other weeds, and don't usually plant into those for about 6 months or longer.

Jessica,
Just to confirm one more time that you aren't crazy, I saw a thread where an instant layered bed had been made and then immediately planted in.
It is definitely do-able and I am actually making another one this year. I did one last year but I didn't need it right away so I covered it in black plastic, held that down with big rocks and let it sit and cook until this spring when I filled it with perennials.(store bought I admit very guiltily because we thought we were moving and I did not sow perennials :-( Anyway, it is doing great now and all I did was lay down cardboard in the shape I wanted the bed, directly on top of the grass. Then wet it down and started layering it with compost we had not been turning. I didn't really even layer it all that much except that we dug to the very bottom of the compost where the decomposed black "gold" was and put that on the very top.
Instant beds are very much a possibility so give it try!
Good luck!

Didn't someone do minature "lasgna pots"? I remember reading how someone used cardboard boxes and plant in them like pots and placed them in the area they wanted to plant them in anyway.

Maybe I am going nuts too?

That was me, Green, with the cardboard boxes.
I am experimenting with them this year because I have rampant weeds and lots of high hopes for woodland/meadow/and even privet hedges and I think the box technique might work.

I'm also figuring out how to combine box and temporary plastic mold for stepping stones -- more to come on that later.

The boxes I've planted are doing alright so far. They lose their square shape very fast, while the soil/sand mixture tends to stay in the box shape.
I put straw in the bottom to help them rot away faster.

The plants are very happy in them. The worst part so far is that both cats and squirrels are highly attracted to them!

Surprisingly they do not look as bad as I feared they would. They seem to be blending in mostly and they definitely stop the weeds.