About this item
Conventional wisdom says to garden from the bottom up, turning over the soil every spring until your back aches. Ironically, this does such a good job aerating that gardeners spend the rest of the season pulling weeds and replacing the suddenly energized (and easily used up) nutrients. Mother nature, on the other hand, gardens from the top down-layering undisturbed soil with leaves and other organic materials. In following this example and synthesizing the work of other perceptive gardeners, Lee Reich presents a compelling new system called weedless gardening. The Weedless Garden is good for plants and it's good for people. It protects the soil, contributes to plant health, reduces water needs, cuts down on a gardener's labor, encourages earthworms and, of course, mitigates weed problems by keeping the seeds dormant.
About the Author
Lee Reich, PhD dove into gardening over 40 years ago, initially with one foot in academia, as an agricultural scientist with the USDA and Cornell University, and one foot in the field, the organic field. He eventually expanded his field to a farmden (more than a garden, less than a farm) and left academia to lecture (garden clubs, master gardener conferences, flower and garden shows, botanical garden symposia, and USDA conferences) , consult, and write. He is the author a number of books and his syndicated column for Associated Press appears bimonthly in newspapers from coast to coast.Lee's farmden has been featured in Martha Stewart Living and The New York Times, and won "Most Beautiful Vegetable Garden" award in Organic Gardening magazine. Besides providing a year 'round supply of fruits and vegetables, the farmden has an educational mission (www.leereich.com/workshops) and is a test site for innovative techniques in soil care, pruning, and food production. Science and an appreciation of natural systems underpin his work.For more about Lee and his work, see www.leereich.com. His weekly blog (www.leereich.com/blog) recounts what's happening on the farmden; for videos, see www.leereich.com/video; for upcoming lectures see www.leereich.com/lectures.
