Lee Reich, PhD, has graduate degrees in soil science and horticulture. He’s a gardener, scientist and author who lives in New Paltz NY. His new book, released by New Society Publishers, is called The Ever Curious Gardener—Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.
Reich grows and experiments with plants in what he calls a “farmden.” The farmden started when he added an adjacent 2 acres to his original ¾-acre property. “So instead of planting where I might have two of a certain type of fruit tree I decided well, since I write about gardening I should be able to play around and experiment a little, so I planted 20 of that. Then there’s another fruit tree and I figured okay, I’ll plant 20 of those. And then I put in another vegetable garden too. So I decided this is really more than a garden but it’s actually not a farm. It’s less than a farm but more than a garden, so I’ll call it a ‘farmden.’ And that’s what it is.”
His new book, The Ever Curious Gardener—Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, reaches beyond the typical hows and whys of gardening. “What I was really trying to convey in the book is here’s how you can take this and you can apply it out in your garden to make a better garden.”
In his interview on KAXE/KBXE’s Wednesday Morning show (full interview below), Reich covered several gardening topics, including hardening off, how plants (and gardeners) cope with drought, soil health (drainage, PH, organic matter), and no-till gardening.
“Gardens and farms are complex systems and there’s all sorts of things interacting,” he says. “If you do nothing except, say, just put seeds in the ground and do the minimum—not do nothing; if you do the minimum—you can get quite good results because these systems have evolved over so long. But…it’s really interesting to know or to learn something about the interactions. And once you know something you can apply it and really get even better results. “
Lee Reich offers signed copies of his new book on his website, leereich.com. The Ever Curious Gardener—Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden is also available in most other places where books are sold.
