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Weedless Gardening Paperback – January 8, 2000

by Lee A. Reich (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 436 ratings
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Garden like Mother Nature, with an organic system that’s good for plants and good for people.
 
Say good-bye to backaches and weed problems!  Lee Reich’s organic Weedless Gardening eschews the traditional yearly digging up and working over of the soil. It’s is an easy-to-follow, low-impact approach to planting and maintaining a flower garden, a vegetable patch, trees, and shrubs naturally.

"If you love to knock yourself out digging beds, buy a better shovel. If you're looking for a no-nonsense alternative, buy this book!" -Ketzel Levine, National Public Radio's Doyenne of Dirt)

"Thoroughly practical, easy-to-follow guide to good gardening Lee Reich make it sound simple, and if you follow his methods and philosophy, it is." -Dora Galitzki, Gardening Columnist, The New York Times, and Author of The Gardener's Essential Companion

"Finally, a book filled with science-based information that insures success and frees us from busywork in the garden." - Dr. H. March Cathey, President Emeritus, American Horticultural Society


 
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    176 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Workman Publishing Company
  4. Publication date
    January 8, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.5 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0761116966
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0761116967
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"There's no such thing," my ace-gardener mom said when I told her about Weedless Gardening. I think author Lee Reich would agree that the title is a bit misleading (there will always be some weeds). Also a bit misleading are the blurbs from the publisher, which stop short of calling the book "ground-breaking" only because Reich's system is based on the total eschewal of tilling or otherwise turning over the soil. The building blocks of his philosophy have been in use for decades in one way or another: from low-till commercial farming techniques (which sometimes also involve firebombing the soil with herbicide) to simple green composting with knocked-down cover crops. But in Weedless Gardening Reich takes it all the way, no tilling, no herbicide unless absolutely necessary--all while providing everything the home gardener needs to know about cover crops, composting, and drip irrigation. In every section Reich lists mail-order and Internet sources for supplies.

The benefits of cover crops, composting, and planting in beds rather than rows are widely known, and they're dealt with in depth here. More controversial is Reich's injunction to rigorously preserve the natural layering of the soil--even when pulling up weeds, dead annuals, or old corn stalks. He makes a good case: tilling under weedy areas kills existing weeds in the short term, but turning over the dirt exposes more weed seeds to sunlight and air, and more of them will germinate; better to kill them first by mowing and self-composting or smothering them with mulch. In addition, Reich explains, water in broken-up, uniform soil tends to flow straight down; water in undisturbed soil travels more slowly, in different directions--down and sideways--thus more efficiently reaching roots. Installing a drip irrigation system further decreases water use (the book includes detailed instructions and formulas for calculating water-flow and timing) and, like many of Reich's recommendations, apparently works best when practiced in concert with his no-till, "top-down" method.

What isn't clear is how effective his system can be in an area that has been worked over by indifferent landscapers or that has already been tilled over and over for years. How long will it take for that plot's soil to resettle into something resembling its pretilled state? If my mom starts "weedless gardening" now, will she be wading through a forest of weeds or, worse, buying tasteless corn at the supermarket come August? --Liana Fredley

From Publishers Weekly

Weeds are every gardener's nemesis, so any book promising to eliminate them is certain to excite interest. Fortunately, Reich's approach is a credible one. A former agricultural researcher for Cornell University and the USDA, Reich (Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention: A Gardener's Guide) challenges conventional gardening or gardening from the bottom up, in which the soil is turned over every spring or fall. This method exposes to light and air all the weed seeds lying dormant in the soil and encourages weed growth. Reich maintains that instead, since soil health determines plant health, gardeners should essentially create new soil by gardening as nature does from the top down. This means placing layers of newspaper over the soil to smother weed growth, covering the area year after year with mulch (which can include compost, leaves, bark chips or peat moss), then planting in that rich medium. He outlines his method in detail, offering modifications for different soil types and adding irrigation, planting, harvesting and tidying tips. Numerous charts and illustrations accompany Reich's chatty, highly literate text. He also discusses cover crops, vegetables, various types of flower garden designs, groundcovers, trees (including fruit trees), shrubs and vines, all of which can flourish under the weedless gardening technique. Reich's is a revolutionary approach to gardening, engagingly and lucidly explained. (Mar.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Workman Publishing Company (January 8, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0761116966
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0761116967
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.5 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 436 ratings

About the author

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Lee Reich

Lee Reich

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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.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
436 global ratings
LOOK AT MY GARDEN GROW. THANKS for the help Mr. Reich, your book was just what I needed to make gardening enjoyable.
5 Stars
LOOK AT MY GARDEN GROW. THANKS for the help Mr. Reich, your book was just what I needed to make gardening enjoyable.
My Dad started organic gardening in 1973. He used the square foot gardening method, trade for mulch, composted our vegetable refuse, and we had the best tasting vegetables, EVER. I have tried to copy my father’s techniques but weeds always took over my garden. Lee Reich gave the tidbits of information I needed to succeed. This method WORKS!. I was going to give up the garden this year but we lost our trees in a tornado and now the garden had full sun. I pulled out all the weeds, laid down brown paper, used tree chips as my walkways (so much around with half the town losing trees from a macro burst, which us peons call a tornado), then found a place where I could buy organic compost for a reasonable price, $20 a yard! In one week, I went from weeds to wonderful! Bought some veggie plants from the nursery up the road, and started some from seeds. I have the most beautiful garden I ever had! My Dad would be proud. Covered all the rows with a good layer of straw and I weed every day when I water. I get about 12 small starter weeds every morning, which come out easiy. I water only the root area of each plant as suggested. I will install drip irrigation next spring since this worked out so well. I have 12 three foot wide rows, 15 feet long. Just had broccoli, zucchini, and peppers last night with dinner. YUM. Start up cost: Compost 4 cubic yards, $90 total. Brown paper cost $35 for 3 rolls, (garden measures 36’ x 36’). Annual cost: Straw was $50 for 4 bales. Plants and/or seeds $50. It has only been 30 days since my garden was planted and it is magnificent! Do the work...it’s worth it!
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Top reviews from the United States

Kenneth A. Ensley
5.0 out of 5 stars Good farming book
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2024
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Good book about methods to garden with limited weeding.
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Dan Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars This book made gardening fun again.
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2008
Verified Purchase
I came across Lee Reich's book a few years ago in our local library (I've since purchased it to keep on hand). Since I was knee deep in weeds at the time the title intrigued me. At the time it was mid summer and my garden, as usual, was an example of spring time work gone awry.

Each year, I dilligently tilled and rowed my garden as my father and his father had done, arranged the sprinklers, planted the best plants, staked the beans, caged the tomatoes and planned how this year I was going to have a TV worthy garden. Then May turned to June, to July and 98 degrees and 98% humidity stopped my outdoor adventures. I only went to the garden to harvest the results, which were rapidly disappearing under a malaise of weeds, bugs, and diseases. So once again by summer time the garden had become an unsightly eye sore rather than the picture of pride I had foolishly envisioned while reading over the seed catalogue. If only I didn't have a real job, and kids, and a to do list a mile long, I could spend my days toiling away in the garden to get one of those "fake" TV gardens that obviously cannot be produced by mere mortals.

After skimming through the book I began to get excited. I really didn't expect much from the book but the concepts made a certain sense and if they worked, maybe I could actually improve my garden.

Three years into this experiment, I can say that I look forward to gardening more now than ever. What used to be a chore is now a pleasant break from my routine and a source of pride to visitors. While no garden is truly weedless, it is much easier to stay ahead of the weeds using Lee's approach. It also fits much better into the rest of what I do. I used to have to figure out where to get rid of the grass clippings all year, and the mulch/chips from tree removal and land clearing. Now, my 1000 square foot garden consumes as much material as I can throw at it. My grass, my neigbors grass, my mothers grass, leaves, kitchen scraps, etc, most of which people are glad to have a place to dump, all go into my garden.

I have not followed all the recommendations of Mr. Reich. I'm currently experimenting with composting in my overly large walkways (48 inch) rather than composting in a seperate compost bin. It cuts my yield but pleases the wife since there is no large ugly bin in the yard, and no turning of the compost. (My chickens turn it for me, while adding their own brand of nitrogen.)

As with most garden books, the first half is dedicated to the topic at hand, the second half is a glossary of gardening topics, plant varieties, tools, and techniques/tips which are common to most any gardening book. This is often viewed as a "filler" in many books, a way to justify the price for the now larger book. This book has many such items in it's second half but all that I have read are specific to the no till, weedless method and are not simply added ad hoc from another source for filler.

Again, three years into this experiment, I'd can honestly say I'd never go back to the till method.
58 people found this helpful
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Hope G.
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent starter book for no-till.gardening
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017
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Reich makes the case for not turning over or digging large areas of soil. Written accessibly and accurately for someone to implement this. You will be using lots of compost and mulch at least for the first few years until you learn to work with cover crops and ground covers. Reich has practical suggestions for common issues: layout, what to do through the seasons,etc.,and good resource lists for equipment supplies and some seeds.
10 people found this helpful
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G. McC.
5.0 out of 5 stars Put that tiller away!
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2006
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Better yet, go ahead and sell the tiller -- you probably don't need it. Introduced to the idea of mulch-bed gardening by Gene Logsdon, I implemented the method in my garden this year. It is now September, and I probably haven't spent half an hour pulling weeds all summer. And it isn't because I have let things go; there just hasn't been that many weeds.

About the only problem I have had is grass encroaching from the sides. With so few weeds, I was beginning to wonder if there was a problem. My vegetable plants are doing just fine, though, and have generally been much more productive than they were last year.

Now that I have read Reich's book, I have a clearer idea of what's going on and understand how I might do things even better next time around. Weedless Gardening is similar to the method Logsdon describes in The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Gardening -- though it might be more accurately described as compost-bed gardening -- but Reich goes into more detail on the particulars, at least as far as keeping the weeds at bay goes. (Now don't get me wrong: I have enjoyed reading and profited from Logsdon's writing as well.)

This is an easy read with a lot of good information packed into a relatively short book. Not having to deal with so many weeds (or wondering when I would find the time to deal with them!) makes gardening so much more enjoyable. I only wish I had discovered this book a few years ago.

As an aside, anyone with poultry might also find Andy Lee's book Chicken Tractor helpful. It too describes a variation of the no-till theme.

p.s. To address Joseph's comment (below) in part, I can get unprinted newsprint paper from my local newspaper. They usually discard the very last part of each roll; just ask if they have any "end rolls" available.
53 people found this helpful
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Sherry
5.0 out of 5 stars Top expert on gardening and weeding.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2023
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I have heard many references about this author regarding gardening and weeds

It is a wonderful resource for the gardener. I ordered 3 books. One ti out in a Christmas basket to a dear friend and gardener.
1 to put in a gift basket for silent auction baskets for my garden club and one for me
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Jeff Lubell
5.0 out of 5 stars Helped make my huge garden nearly weedless!
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2015
Verified Purchase
Weedless Gardening was one of two critical books that shaped my basic approach to vegetable gardening. (The other was the Vegetable Gardener's Bible.) I first read it about seven years ago but picked it up again recently and was struck by how much solid usable information it contains. In addition to the fundamental approach it advocates to growing a garden with a minimum amount of weeds (which works for my garden, even though I am on the edge of a meadow chock full of weeds), the book contains a helpful vegetable calendar (including times to plant for Fall harvest) and a calculator for figuring out how long you need to leave your drop irrigation system on, information on planting fruit trees, great advice on composting and lots of other well-informed tidbits.

My only real deviations from his formula: I garden in raised beds, consisting of mounds I created by tilling the soil once and then shoveling soil from the areas I designated as walkways onto the areas designated as garden beds and then mounding the soil (without supports.) Also, to keep weeds from growing in rows and on sides of the beds, I use a heavy garden fabric (from Gardens Alive) and also have some around the perimeter of the garden. You need to periodically sweep the fabric to keep soil off of it but it last several years and sure beats the alternatives!

I heartily recommend this book!
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Bamba
5.0 out of 5 stars This book helped me to save thousands
Reviewed in Canada on June 28, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book is must have! I would never imagine to use old Amazon package boxes to kill weeds. Works really well. I will never ever try to dig weeds again! This book helped me to save thousands, although I have very small backyard!!!

My trees and roses are very happy now.
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Ingolf
5.0 out of 5 stars Für Gärtnern und Englisch lernen
Reviewed in Germany on December 19, 2017
Verified Purchase
Dieses Buch vermittelt umfangreiches Wissen, um Unkräuter im Garten zu reduzieren und das in einem gut verständlichen Englisch. Leser auf mittlerem Sprachniveau können den Inhalt dieses Buches gut verstehen. Das Wissen, das darin vermittelt wird, ist aber nicht neu. Man kann auch einzelne Empfehlungen aus dem Buch im eigenen Garten anwenden.
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P. Kinsella
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2012
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Not a bad little book. I learned quite a lot and have found it useful. I think it didnt need to be as long as it was as it repeats a lot of the info but all in all well priced and useful.
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Paul Stencell
5.0 out of 5 stars Stop turning over your soil, labour saving, I ordered all three books.
Reviewed in Canada on February 7, 2020
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Great information.
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Amanda Prevost
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on September 20, 2017
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Great Book. Can't wait to try it out next year!
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