Sounds great as long as the sod is not bermuda!
James

Momfryhover,

James took the words right out of my mouth.

If you have bermuda grass, you could pour asphalt and build a lasagna bed on top of it and the bermuda grass would crack the asphalt, grow up through it and grow right through your lasagna beds.

Lasagna gardening is just a new name for sheet composting and mulch gardening, both of which have been used in the USA for decades. I enjoyed reading Pat Lanza's books on lasagna gardening, but knew immediately that in our climate and with the aggressiveness/invasiveness of bermuda grass, you'd have to remove all the sod first, build the bed in the fall and then plant in the spring.

And, if you don't have bermuda but are trying to build lasagna beds on top of closely-cropped native prairie grasses, some of those grasses (and Johnson grass is one that I have in mind, but there are others) are just as aggressive and will take over your lasagna bed just as much as the bermuda grass will.

Another issue is our heat and the degree to which your decomposing layers will heat up and roast your plant roots. In our climate, compost piles can easily reach 140 to 160 degrees while materials are actively decomposing and plant roots will not be happy at those temps. If you build your lasagna bed of ingredients that are already fully and completely composted, or at least 90% decomposed, you shouldn't have the temperature issues. But, if you are using raw materials like fresh manure and newly shredded leaves, you're going to have some hot decompostion occurring. That's why it is better to build a lasagna bed of fresh materials (as opposed to purchased, bagged, already-decomposed materials) in the fall so it can be mostly decomposed by spring and the roots won't roast.

Dawn

I double and triple what's been said about bermuda. I tried "instant beds" with it three years ago, just to prove it to myself. Can't be done.

One the other hand, if you have other,less agressive grasses, you can have great instant success by turning the sod upside down on top of your cardboard. Put your other lasagna ingredients on top of that.

At the encouragement of other winter sowers, I planted in lasagna within six weeks of doing it. I planted in dirt "plugs" the size of large orange juice cans. I really didn't believe it would work, but it did. There were still identifiable bits of carrot, green beans, strawberries and avocado peels.

Good luck with your project.

Seedmama

Seedmama,

Do you mean that you have a less aggressive grass than bermuda grass? Oh, lucky you! I am so jealous.

I can't do lasagna beds with partly decomposed stuff here in the wild Oklahoma outback because all the parts of carrots, green beans, strawberries and avocado peels, etc. attract digging and scrounging type varmints like possums, skunks and raccoons. So, I "compost" mine first (sort of) by feeding it to the chickens and then adding their bedding/manure to the beds in the fall where those materials can decompose over the winter. I guess we all have to do whatever we find works for us. If we ever move again (and we aren't going to), I won't even look at property that has had bermuda grass on it.

I love lasagna beds, but they can be hard to get started on top of bermuda grass and I wish people who write about lasagna beds in books, magazines and other places would at least mention that you're going to have trouble with truly invasive grasses. When someone asks me to come over and look at their new lasagna bed and tell them what is wrong with it, I know before I arrive at their house that "bermuda grass" is almost always the problem.

I started "mulch gardening" or "sheet composting" back in the early 1990s before Pat Lanza coined the term "lasagna gardening" and I have always used it to build beds. The name I knew it under from the beginning was "the Ruth Stout method". It worked better for me when I lived in a civilized town with a small wildlife population. Here in the country, a lasgna bed with still-decomposing organic material is fair game for every critter that wanders through the yard--and I wish it wasn't so.

Dawn

I'm actually having better luck with my lasagna beds than I thought I was going to have. I use at least 20 sheets of black & white print newspaper or thick cardboard from large boxes, then add on the layers. I'll add newspaper between soil/manure/compost layers along with leaves, used coffee grounds, used tea grounds, leafy greens- from lettuce, cleaning bell peppers (this I carefully remove seed from and rinse before it goes into my composting can in the kitchen) and other kitchen waste. I'm just always careful, like with the bell peppers, to clean away anything that might cause the composted veggie leavings to sprout. That way I don't have veggies coming up in my flower beds! Silk and husks from corn go in there too, skins from garlic and onions, etc. When I have a can full (I use an old coffee can in the kitchen) it's spread over as far as it will spread for the next layer, then topped with soil, manure, leaves, newspaper... whatever the layer after it is. I've been doing this all fall and winter and when I dig in, things are composting in nicely :)

I don't see why you couldn't direct sow on these. I did when I started the first ones last year. I dug through some of the soil and top layers of newspapers and leaves for plants, but just sowed my seeds and covered them with the right depth of soil/compost/manure (any, either or a mix of all three, depended on what I had on hand at the time!) That's one of the beauties of lasagna gardening, it's very versatile as far as planting. The seed's still going to germinate normally and should have no problem setting a root system through the layers as it grows. Believe it or not, the lasagna layers seem to hold a balance of moisture that keeps the newspaper and leaves pliable enough for the roots to reach through for your plant to grow. Yet it doesn't get as 'hot' as regular compost piles. So it won't cook your germinating babies.

Just like with what the others are saying, if it's over bermuda, I hope you used LOTS of thick layers for your base! It's the bane of gardeners... or even lawn lovers :)
I'm hoping I can smother it out with clover or something.

Kathy

Kathy,

I turned brick-hard red clay soil into a very large shrub bed on the east side of our house by building a very large lasagna bed. It took me 5 years of adding and adding and adding stuff to the bed which was about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide before I was finally satisfied enough with the soil to plant permanent shrubs there. During that time I added every bit of compostable material I could scrounge up. It didn't look real beautiful as it decomposed, but I didn't care. I had a goal in mind and I was determined to achieve it. I did surface sow annual seeds of flowers in the decomposing mess and raised annual flowers there which helped hide the compost-pile-look to a certain degree.

This was one bed we did properly---we asked the guy who was installing our tornado shelter to dig out the top foot of soil (if you consider red clay to be soil) and bermuda grass roots. That's why it took me so long to build that bed....because I was starting out one foot beneath the soil surface. If I had known how quickly a guy with a backhoe or bulldozer could remove all that bermuda, I would have hired one and turned him loose in the veggie garden area before I turned it into a veggie garden. LOL

Dawn

Dawn, I WISH I had something other than Bermuda. While we were building our house, we had "something" that grew wild in the summer and in the winter hubby overseeded with rye. So the spring I did the lasagna that's what I was dealing with. Bermuda is the devil in disguise.

Before he went out of business I had access to a cabinet maker's sawdust pile. He took all his sawdust to a pile out back and I could load it up by the trailer load. The first few loads were easy, but after I got into the stuff he said was three years old, I came into little "bits" of bleached out bermuda. Any other grass would have long since suffocated. But this bermuda was just waiting for its chance. I had to sift all the sawdust to remove the bits, and after a while it just wasn't worth it anymore.

We have a token patch of Bermuda because the HOA says so. (Don't get me started.)I will say that we chose a less aggressive variety called Riviera. It's not available in sod and the seed is rather expensive, but given that we had to have Bermuda, in retrospect I can say it was a better choice. It's runners aren't nearly as aggressive as other bermudas I've known, and it has a very fine blade that feels good underfoot. Nonetheless, you still can't do lasagna with it.

Seedmama,

The HOA says so? LOL! Are you kidding?!! They require you to have it? You can't replace it with something that's more lawn-like rather than a raging wild being that just has to take over everything else? Are they nuts?! You would think a HOA would want something that would be more aesthetically pleasing! Cause I'm telling you, bermuda is the ugliest stuff I've ever seen! Along with being a sneak and a bully!

Kathy

Dana,

I'm sorry. When you mentioned less invasive grsses, I thought you meant that you were one of the lucky homeowners who HAD them. My mistake. There is a rumor that some people in our state have zoysia and fescue lawns and do not have to fight bermuda grass the way the rest of us do, but I don't know anyone here with a nice manageable lawn grass like that--we all have bermuda.

HOAs drive me nuts. I know people in a development with an HOA and they have to have a particular variety of tif bermuda AND they all had to plant the same tree in their front yards, and that particular tree is prone to oak wilt in Texas, so there's a huge issue with that as well. I would be an insane lunatic if I had to deal with a HOA.

Kathy,

HOAs have run amok. Some HOAs won't allow kids to have basketball hoops in their driveways or those wooden playground-type swing sets with a little "fort" on stilts and some won't allow any flower (like sunflowers, for example) that gets taller than the mandated wooden privacy fence surrounding the backyard. Some country club communities where the backyards adjoin the golf courses completely prohibit backyard fences of any kind. Some HOAs don't allow vegetable gardens unless there is a wooden privacy fence that "hides" it from view.

It can be very hard to be a gardener and live in a development with an HOA, but some HOAs are much more reasonable than others. Still, one of our requirements when we were looking for land in OK before we moved here was that we didn't want to be in a "community" with an HOA.

Very few people fight an HOA successfully. Deed restrictions often are set up favor the HOA and ensures that homeowners cannot fight the HOA at all, much less successfully. In many states, the laws give HOAs the right to fine the homeowners for non-compliance with deed restrictions and HOA policies, and even give HOAs the right to file a lien against the homes or even take away the homes if the fines aren't paid. That's all I'll say about HOAs except to repeat that I would not live in a housing development that has an HOA. (Not a problem in our area because we really don't have housing developments in Love County--we're too rural.)

In the 1970s, my sister's best friend's parents moved from our neighborhood to a newer neighborhood a few miles away. One of the first things they did was remove the front lawn, which had been bermuda grass, and seed the area with a short-grass prairie mix of grasses and forbs. They had the MOST beautiful yard and I adored it. Luckily for them, they did not live in an area with an HOA but the city repeatedly harassed them about the height of their "lawn" which, in the eyes of city ordinance enforcement officers, violated lawn-mowing ordinances. The lady who lived in that home and tended the native prairie landscape was my hero because she fought for the right to have her little piece of prairie in her front yard. As far as I know, she lives there still and her native wildflowers do too.

Dawn

Kathy, can you believe it? Lots of things in our restrictions remind me of Maya Angelou, who, paraphrased said, "When you knew better, you did better." I think a lot of things are just rooted in a lack of awareness.

The bermuda rule worked just fine in the front part of the neighborhood, what I tongue in check refer to as the golf course. People are on their mowers all weekend. We, purposefully, chose the back part of the neighborhood, which was wooded. I say "was" because even some of the individuals who did their own homes took the builder mentality of "get rid of the trees" so they have golf courses too. Those who kept trees have issues with keeping the bermuda at its best and have been forced to interplant with shade grasses. It looks a bit silly to have two kinds of grasses patchworked in a yard. But that's what it took to meet the bermuda requirement. I took a different path. If and when I'm ever "finished" my yard will be the photo negative of most yards. Whereas most yards are a solid mass of green with a token island of flowers in the middle, mine will be a solid mass of beds and borders, with one token island of grass in the middle.
The bermuda issue is just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, "Don't get me started."

I did put down thick layers of cardboard first and then a layer of composted manure..I have about 100 bags of last fall leaves that i am going to mow and put on...that darn bermuda won't ever see the light of day if I have my way! We shall see! I am worried about cutting holes for plants...might give that bermuda the light of day...hmmm..got to think about that.

Momfryhover, The bermuda grass will find its way up through the holes. There's just no way around it. You'll have to treat the bermuda chemically with a glyphosate weed killer, and brushing or rolling it on by hand is the best way to do that without having spray drift onto and kill your desirable plants.

With bermuda grass, we don't get to have our way....it has its' way and we just have to cope with it. When you cut your holes and plant your plants, mulch the hole areas as heavily as you dare and it will take the bermuda longer to find those holes. It will find eventually find the holes because it is relentless.

Dana, Like you, my goal is ever-enlarging beds of the plants I like and an ever-shrinking amount of bermuda. After ten years here, I am finally making what I consider to be progress in the war on bermuda. I think that it will take me another ten years to get rid of all the bermuda grass in the acre or so nerest the house, but I am a patient person and I'll see this project through to the end.

Dawn