Newspaper vs. digging?

I'm still up...lol..I have Hep C and don't always feel good.
So when I do,I try get what ever I can done...
I was dumping roses and a few other plants
that I'd lost during the drought & illness this summer :-(

Breezy, I may be OK planting right after Roundup then, 'cause I'm only planting tropicals. But I'll check that out for sure before I do it.

Trackin, thanks for the Walmart tip. You never know if you don't ask. Being a newbie, another thing I'm confused about is planting materials in general. There's garden soil, potting soil, compost, peat, manure, etc. It's all very confusing. Is one better than the other? Or is it just a matter of preference?

Jody, thanks for that 3am link! :o)

:-)

my personal experience is that top soil is just plain junk. its like waterproof sand. i like a mix of peat, garden soil (not the kind with water retention pellets) just the cheap stuff on both of those, then i mix another bag to that of something good, like jungle jims jungle growth, it has mushroom compost/peat/bark chips etc. i work that into whatever soil is already there. since mine is all sand, this mix works pretty well. you can add rotted manure from the bag, no potting soil. then all the stuff i'm going to add from now on, coffee grounds, alfalfa pellets etc.

Jody.............. I'm glad you are feeling better and able to tend to your plants now. Feeling bad really stinks! I'm new to gardening even though I've successfully killed hundreds of beautiful plants for 25 years, now I'm trying to do it right (reading and research) and hope to find some success.

I have never heard of Jungle Growth, but searched for it, and found that you can get it at Lowe's or Home Depot. I'll have to check that out. I think a mixture of things would be good, I just have to make sure that it is well draining soil. I think I've killed more plants I have had in pots from not adding things like perlite, or bark to the potting soil for it to drain. I think I'll have better luck with that with the garden, though, since our soil is sand.

I do know one thing, I don't think I'm going to do this until it cools down a bit. Good thing that cooler weather is right around the corner.

Palmnewbie, I'm on Amelia Island (north of Jacksonville) and it has rained here off and on all day. I think your cooler weather will be there very soon.

teateacher, we have some friends on Amelia Island, and when we stayed with them this summer, I complimented her on all of the pruple beauty berry bushes she had. She promptly apologized and said she'd been so busy she hadn't had time to pull "those weeds" out yet. What a hoot! I prize mine, and they are so prolific, they're weeds to her!

Back to the subject at hand, I just want to ask - Will piling on 10" of ground up leaves help my barren area underneath my trees that are hard packed? I would like to put hostas and other shade loving plants there, but the soil is so hard the roots can't go anywhere.

that's alittle tricky pins, you don't want to raise the soil level too much around trees because you will smother the roots and eventually kill the tree. then too there is the matter of what kind of tree. there are some trees that absolutely nothing will grow under due to various components in the leaves. if it is a doable tree i think grass clippings would be great as an amendment, but i would take a stiff rake and scratch the soil surface( not too much to hurt the tree roots). just putting grass clippings down will take awhile to break down or may just blow off. also 10" seems like it could promote dampness and/or heat. i think a good mix of grass clippings with some good peat or compost and try a thinner layer. let that work for awhile, maybe a season, then add more, wait, add more. the reason i say this is that it will give the tree time to adjust to the surface and it's roots will come up to the surface alittle so you don't smother it. this is just an opinion, i'm no tree expert by any means. debi

This is called 'Lasagna Gardening'

If you google for this you should get lots of info.

I'm trying it for the first time this year, and am confident of sucess after reading up on it and reading other's postings.

Joan

The book "Lasagna Gardening" by Patricia Lanza is very good.

Great link, JodyC! Loved this quote (could be describing me):

debi, what is discouraging is that every year my husband mulches up about 30 bags of leaves and we do put a couple of inches on the soil. It quickly decomposes into the soil and we still have hard soil. That's why I was thinking of more mulch. Maybe this year I'll try 5" to see what happens. The roots are not on top of the ground, so I think I may be safe.

pins, what kind of tree is it?

Let's see, an American birch (keeps its leaves all winter), a hickory, an ash, and a hardwood I don't know the name of (definitely not an oak, though).

well, i don't see anything there that would make me think that you couldn't plant under them. but i don't understand why the ground stays so hard packed. i don't know what the setting is like but maybe you could build a ring around them out of brick (or another material) to hold the amendments in and maybe eventually it would soften up. i know thats hard when it comes to mowing and edging and stuff, but i would think that as the shade plants grew and kind of draped over the liner, that would bring enough shade on the outer edge where weeds wouldn't want to grow. debi

A couple articles I've read said the folks have put up to two feet of organic material on the spot they want to plant, and by spring it's all broken down to a foot or so of wonderful soil. That's my dream!

gardenwife, if you want that dream to come true fast, you are welcome to come try it on my sandpile of a yard any time!!! LOL debi