Gardening Len's Way

A little while back I was reading an article in Rural Missouri on a revolutionary style of gardening. It caught my attention! It was describing the brillant gardening idea called Gardening Len's Way.This man, Leonard Pense , lives down in Southern Mo where the soil is clay and full of rocks. He enjoyed gardening but found his garden was not faring well in such poor conditions. Mr. Pense came up with a plan for creating weed free raised bed gardens. I have lived in southern MO for a year when I was 14. My Dad wanted to have a large garden while we lived there. We did try! Our garden plot was new and full of rocks. Instead of weeding we said we were rock picking. When we drove along the roads in the Ozarks you could always tell if a garden spot had been there for sometime, all the rocks were picked out.

Where I live now the soil isn’t much better. It is poor clay soil and I tried several years in a row to raise some decent vegetables in it. I would get so discouraged over the results I would give up and let it go to weeds. A year ago I was cleaning house occasionally for a friend and noticed she had a beautiful raised strawberry bed that ran the length of her house. The soil was great, she had few weeds, and it was very easy for her to care for even with her poor health. Since then I have wanted to try some raised beds but never have because of the initial expense. For this year I had no garden at all and I missed having some fresh produce at the house.

This brings us back to “Gardening Len’s Way” Mr. Pense says it is a common sense way of growing an organic, weed free, raised bed, vegetable, fruit or flower gardens. A friend, Lisa, is going to take a class from Mr. Pense on this style of gardening and has already bought his notebook of information. She let me borrow the notebook recently.

Mr. Pense has given various plans for his cinderblock raised beds with instructions on putting them together. He gives ideas on supporting your plants, watering and feeding your plants, the special materials and formula needed for your weed free soil, and a page of resources.

Everything shared in the booklet is based on a raised bed of 4 feet wide by 16 feet long. The beauty of this size is the bed can be worked from both sides without stepping in the bed. It appears that a standard 4x16 bed would cost $417.00 to buy the special formula to garden in this manner. From what Lisa understands this soil can be used year after year adding a “soil vitamin” mix each year for approximately $25.00. That seems high to me but I suppose if you are using it year after year it would be worth it. I’m looking forward to seeing how Lisa’s raised bed will produce this coming year.

Mr. Pense gives the layout for an asparagus bed and a layout for fruit gardens. If you are a gardener I would highly recommend visiting The Gardening Revolution site and reading what Mr. Pense has to share. Here I have myself all excited to start some gardening and it’s supposed to sleet tonight! At this rate I’ll have cabin fever before our first snow fall.