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Retiree finds joy in organic gardeningMEEKER, Okla. (AP)--In his 30 years as a truck driver, Max Walker experienced many unusual sights. But it wasn't until he retired that he found something he truly considered unique and worthwhile. Walker and his wife, Carolyn, both of Meeker, read an article in Homestead Magazine that discussed organic gardening with raised beds. As a part of the article, a class taught by Leonard "Len" Pense, developer of the soil-free mixture used in the beds, was announced. They quickly decided to meet with Pense and attended one of his classes in Missouri. When the couple returned home, they began their own raised bed gardens and decided to become the only distributors of Pense's PreMix and Essential Elements--Len's Way Family of Products--in Oklahoma. Now, only a few months later, the Walkers' Rocky Top Organic Vegetables receives numerous calls each week. "We've had more interest from 300 or 400 miles away than locally," Max said. His wife agreed. "It's been amazing to me--all the states I hear from," she said. "It's making the world smaller. We're building friends all over; it's amazing." Also amazing to the couple is how much food a single 4-foot by 16-foot raised bed garden can produce. "It's something, how much the vegetables can produce," Carolyn said. The main idea of the raised bed, soil-free garden is to grow healthier vegetables that taste better, and to produce more food in a smaller area and to know what is in the ground where the seeds are planted. "When you plant using traditional gardens, you don't know what you need or what might be in the soil," said Carolyn. "This way, you know." Rather than using existing soil, raised bed gardens are created with bags of Pense's PreMix, a soil-less combination of peat moss, rice hulls, certified organic cotton burr compost and a few other ingredients. Then a thin powder, the Essential Elements, is added. "The powder has 46 trace minerals, mixed with cottonseed, grain and rice," Carolyn said. "It and watering are all you need after the initial setup of the beds." "And Len contracts with farmers a year in advance to make sure no fertilizers or chemicals are used on the crops," Max added. "That's how he can certify that his products are truly organic." Pense, who is in his 70s, created the gardening mixture and additional nutrients after realizing how difficult it was to grow a garden at his home in the Ozark Mountains. With Oklahoma's red clay and wind, it's a good, alternative gardening option here, too, the Walkers said. "You can make them as tiny or as elegant as you want," Carolyn said. "You can put them in any type container, like an old washtub or cattle tank, as long as it hasn't been painted with lead paint and doesn't contain treated wood or treated landscape chips." The Walkers chose to build a concrete slab for their seven beds and designed them as Pense instructed, using concrete blocks, PVC pipe and printed diagrams. "You can scrape off the ground and put wire mesh to keep rodents away and cover it with a heavy black material if the concrete is too expensive," Carolyn explained. "And you can use cattle panels for things that grow up or lay down for support. It's a real loose mixture and the panels stabilize the plants from the wind." The panels also stabilize corn as it grows and becomes top heavy, Max Walker said. The purpose of having small gardens, no wider than 4-foot each, is to allow the gardener to reach across, rather than step on or between the plants in the garden.
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