lasagna gardening, spreading compost, making the garden bigger...

Yesterday was fantastic! Warm weather (60 degrees!) abundant sunshine and lots of yard work, what a wonderful day! The blue scilla (Siberian Squill) that grow near the house are already blooming and as I raked away leaves, I could see lots of perennials already starting to poke through. I moved lots of the leaves into the compost area but left some on the gardens. I want to go gradual.
I'm making the veggie garden lots bigger this year, so I am creating a "lasagna" garden to kill off the grass organically. What that means is I am not using chemicals, but instead, excluding the sunlight and smothering off the grass where I would like the future garden to be. Very low impact, I don't need to rototill and it kind of mimics what happens in woods and forests, where leaves fall down and eventually rot into the ground, making a very fertile area. This method works for any kind of garden, vegetable, flower, herb, mixed.
First I lay down cardboard or several inches thick newspaper. This is a great way to make sure the cardboard or newspaper doesn't end up in the landfill, another huge benefit. Then over the top of the cardboard/newspaper layer I put compost, grass clippings, well rotted manure to help amend the soil. since no sunlight is reaching the grass, it eventually dies, and decays, also adding to the nutrients in the garden. If I am antsy, I can just push aside the top layer, cut a hole into the decomposing cardboard or newspaper layer and plant the seedlings. This is a fast and easy way to make a large garden, and also put more nutrients into the soil as well. Its not an exact science, I use what is on hand and what could be used as compost material. Things that cannot go in are bones, animal fats, meat scraps or pet manure. In the fall I have an abundance of maple leaves, and also clippings from the garden. During the winter, I have been bringing home buckets of "green", clippings, stems and petals from the flowers used at Kindred Spirits Organics, plus the coffee grounds from Harmony Cafe.
This method is how I started the perennial gardens and paths, just by layering organic material. What fun! We also found someone who was giving away poultry manure on freecycle so we were able to get a few buckets to add to the garden. I'm keeping my fingers crossed the woman who advertised on freecycle that she had well rotted horse manure gives us a call too, our garden and my two sons gardens could benefit from that as well. Gardening is just so cool. I got filthy dirty and exhausted yesterday schlepping around all the compost and raking for hours, and I couldn't have felt better!