g'day kristiina,

i would suggest you try to maintane the neutral aspect of the soil, this is the first time i've heard that coffee beans (i've never used them) are acid causing i know pine needles are, so for me would use them sparingly if not at all.

lasagne/raised bed/no-dig/square foot are all the same thing presented in according the the nature of things in very different ways but they are all varients of sheet mulching raised garden beds. so to that end nothing is set in cement as to what you need or how you use it, like cooking you do it to suit your needs.

anyhow we use raised beds so invite you to check how we do ours there may be some ideas there for you?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Looks like a great list to me. I'd go for it all. Is the office paper shredded? That would help.

Karen

Thanks len,
Your website is quite nice! I enjoyed poking around and seeing all you had put up.
I've read many places that coffee grounds have an acidifying effect and should be countered with lime. Since I am looking for a more acidic environment for my blueberries, it seems as though it would be perfect for me if I didn't use the lime.
Since I'm not very experienced with composting, I wanted to make sure that I had a decent mix for what I'm looking for. I wanted to make sure my n-p-k ratios weren't outa wack with lop-sided ingredients. (does that make sence?)
I wouldn't mind dumpster diving for a few things. I just don't want to make it a weekly habit! :-)

Am I well rounded with the items I have?

Thanks again
Kristiina

For the coffee grounds and/or the pine needles to have any affect on your soils pH you would need to add tons, many feet of depth at once. Much research has been done on the affect of pine needles and oaks leaves on soil pH and none of that research has found enough change in soil pH, even after adding them for years, to measure. If leaves would cahnge the soils pH I would have more fear of adding those from Acer (maples) species than Oaks or pines because Acer leaves test out at 3.2 in a pH test while oaks test out at 3.7. Add them with no fear.

Yes the office paper is a small crosscut shred. Nice and tiny. I was thinking about using the office paper whole as my bottom layer instead of newspaper. I don't have newspaper and it kinda seems like the 2 could be interchangeable. Could anyone see negative effects by doing that?

Kristiina

I don't lasagna garden, but I do compost paper. It should be able to substitute for newspaper just fine. I think one of the reasons for using newspaper in the lasagna garden is to supress weeds, and shredded paper will probably not do that as well.

Coffee is acidic, but the grounds are not. The acid is water soluble, so it goes into the brewed coffee and the leftover grounds are pretty close to neutral. Be careful about applying coffee grounds too thickly, especially if they're the fine espresso kind from Starbucks. If those dry out, they can repel water if they're too thick. It doesn't seem to happen if they're not thick, and it also doesn't seem to happen with more coarsely ground coffee.

Sounds good! Thanks for info about the grounds not being acidic. Atleast now I wont be shocked when my PH doesn't go down.
So, I started the search yesterday. I went to publix and picked up a couple of empty glaze buckets. I figured that they could be my food grade collection bins until I'm ready to use the grounds or kitchen scraps. I went to the circle k to gather some coffee grounds...they no longer seperate from trash! ugh! So, I walked to the next plaza over to the coffee shop. The lady in there was a royal B!tc#. They do seperate grounds from trash but "wasn't interested" in giving them to me. She said that she would rather throw them away when I told her I was going to use them for compost. I couldn't believe it! I put in a few calls to the Dunking Donuts around me but have to call back tomorrow to talk to managers. Starbucks isn't in my town! I couldn't believe they haven't moved in yet! If I ask really, really nicely, hubby might stop for me. He passes 4 or 5 on the way home everyday from work. The trick is getting him to make extra stops after an already tiring day!
Would it be bad if it ended up being mostly grass and paper?

Thanks for listening to my woes!
Kristiina

I have heard that most Starbucks will save their grounds for you as long as you pick them up on a regular basis.
Check out some grocery stores for the veges they clean up. I get a bunch of lettuce and other greens to feed to my chickens each week. I'm going to ask them for the coffee grounds also. Last year they gave me all the paper bags that my Spec ed students used to pour coffee into so they could clean the coffee bins, and I used those instead of newspaper for a weed barier. HTH Nancy

If you do have an imbalance, it would be because you have a lot of high carbon components (eg, paper, trimmings, depends how leafy they are, and pine needles)and not a lot of high nitrogen components (lawn trimmings, fresh leafy stuff, manure)
Carbon stuff contributes nicely to the soil structure. Nitrogen is more like fertilizer. So if you can't find green stuff, throw on some blood and bone or other high nitrogen fertilizer to balance your lasagne. Buy a bag of chicken manure at worst.
If you are really worried about pH, get a tester from your garden store and monitor it for a while. It will probably be OK, you might have to toss in a bit of lime (very cheap) if it looks like going too low.

I just noticed that you plan to plant all blueberries.

Blueberries need acidic soil to do well. You don't want to do anything to raise the pH. If anything, you'll want to do something (soil sulfur, iron sulfate, etc) to lower the pH. Blueberries do best in soil with a pH between 4.5 and 5.5. If the pH is above 5.8, you could start seeing iron chlorosis.

That imbalance was exactly what I was thinking. I didn't know exactly what it would be but I knew I was off somehow. I think I'm going to try my hand at dumpster diving. I also have bonemeal and garden sulfer. If I understand your post...I should be ok with the ingredients a amendments I have. Iron Chlorosis is a new term for me. I think I'm going to be searching that when I'm done here. Thanks for all of your help. My confidence has been restored.

Kristiina

Starbuck's has a corporate policy of packaging grounds in these nice, 5lb containers. You ask, they're yours.

I went to Borders for a long while and they loved me because I told them not to worry about separating out the filters. More paper.

After I created my 7th lasagna bed, pretty much with stuff you've mentioned, I started drying them out in the driveway and putting them on the lawn with my little hand spreader. No discernable change except my horrible, dry, compacted soil is slowly improving.

If you can get your hands on straw, neighbors' kitchen scraps, their yard waste, and just keep layering? You'll be fine.

I start my beds with layers of cardboard. In between each layer, I alternated purchased leaf-gro and top soil. My layers were varied, but usually newspaper, straw, garbage, grass clippings, leaves, horse poop, a chipped 70' oak tree that died in our yard, and other things that escape me. As the couple of years have passed, I still leaf-gro and mulch, and have the most fabulous garden dirt.

I just started a bed that's going to be out in the yard. It's probably 150' x 30' at it's widest curve. Even this I started with cardboard.

Good luck!
Christine

Hey,

I've just leafed through both lasagna books by P. Lanza.
So, I gave it a go and made 3 beds to "cook" over the winter. (I'm also going to risk bulbs...so I popped in little pockets of dirt and put the bulbs in it...crossing fingers.)

Lanza discourages too much office paper due to the bleaching process, if I recall. (I have loads of it, too).

Also, in the small spaces book she says she realized that newspaper is better than cardboard. Apparently the worms have a better time with it.

Here's my question: should you water your beds? I watered the paper, but worry that the whole thing won't amount to much.

Any thoughts?

Cover the lasagna mulch with landscape cloth, pin it down, it will hold moisture and breathe. Remove in the spring and plant.
Almost anything you use will be fine unless it it too much of one thing.

I found an easy way to get horse manure and goat droppings by posting an ISO (in search of) on the Freecycle site for my area. I had two different people offer it as often as I want to go get it. I just bring some 5 gallon buckets and a pitch fork for the horse manure and load up the buckets.