Its a little early yet but...

[Gardendollee]

Snowcrazed...I have done both the lasagne and the tiller method last season. Since we live so close give me a call and I will show you what to do.

Both the roundup and lasagne method work really well but like the the others mentioned- it all depends on how fast you want to be planting.

I do the layering over the winter and the roundup in the growing season. If you use round up you can be planting in 15 days or so. I did use a small tiller- similar to a mantis tiller and that made working in the new organic matter so much faster.

Whatever you do you need to be able to put the time in to raking/ sifting/ picking out as much of the grass root as possible. Any little bit left in the bed can reannimate and grow. So we'll see how well I did when spring comes huh?

BTY roundup breaks down completely after about 5-7 days so I do use it in my IPM garden when i start a new bed.
Call me- Dolly

[Chris_W]

I've done landscaping and now constructed 2 nurseries and we have done a combination of things and tried just about everything.

In our new growing areas we spray roundup and also spray brush-b-gon. These are organic and do break down in soil. They do not, however, break down in water, so never spray on a rainy day or when it will rain in a couple days so it doesn't runoff with the water and never spray near any body of water.

After we kill the grass/weeds (we will spray, wait a week, then spray anything we missed), then we rototill. Then we add compost that we get trucked in from either the city of Ann Arbor or the city of Jackson (they have municipal composting facilities and sell it by the yard - check in your area for cities nearby that might do this). After the compost we will often rototill again, or if the soil is already good we just spread it on the surface to block those weed seeds. After planting we mulch to again block the weed seeds.

This has worked the best for us on large areas. We prepared about 1/2 acre like this last summer and another 1/2 acre the summer before.

Good luck no matter how you decide to do it!

Chris

[newtohosta-no more]

A couple years ago I saw people discussing the Lasagna method , so went to the library last spring and found Patricia Lanza's book "Lasagna Gardening" and read it. I haven't used the method yet, but I'm planning on it this year. I know she has written several books on the subject. ("Lasagna Gardening with Herbs" and "Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces") I'll have to check out the others at my library. So Tina...don't feel embarrassed for not knowing what it was all about, because I didn't either the first time I saw it mentioned. If you have a library nearby, stop in and check to see if they have the book!