The Metropolitan Magazine - Mid-Atlantic Surgical

There’s something so satisfying about plucking mouth-watering produce from a plant you carefully nurtured from seedling into a flavorfully (bountiful) food source. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuces, strawberries, even corn…it’s a hobby the whole family can get hooked on, and a practical way to live a healthier lifestyle. You remember your grandparents’ gardens…and how hard they toiled to put dinner on the table. The tilling, the watering, the weeds…all seemed worth it when you tasted the difference in produce that’s fresh from the backyard! And the money they saved helped them make ends meet.
Eastern Shore Forest Products owner, Tom Johnson recalls those times, and his journey through life has led him back to the “roots” of farming. Now, of course, most of us don’t have the space or time to construct and maintain a huge garden like the “olden days”… but Johnson has spent the past few years developing a system that gives even the most novice gardener a nearly fool-proof way to experience all the satisfaction of growing healthy food… without all the weeding, watering and work.
The Expert Garden Systems that Eastern Shore Forest Products introduced last year have been simplified into a modular design so that anyone with a deck or a two-foot patch of land can grow their own backyard garden.
Whether your area is as small as 3-foot by 4-foot or as large as an acre…the modular design of these raised-bed garden systems allows for an endless array of sizeable configurations. It also gives you the flexibility to start with one or two, and add on through the years if you’d prefer.
Each pre-assembled, cypress-timber, raised-bed kit can be ready to plant in 10 minutes. It comes complete with fabric weed barrier, galvanized steel rodent barrier, drip-line irrigation, and a compost-rich super soil. The soil is one of the big secrets behind this garden system’s fruitfulness.
Since this “Super Soil” is included in the kit, these boxes hold the potential for nutrient-rich produce that far exceeds even any organic-labeled produce you can find. Sounds like a bold claim, but Johnson says that the minerals and nutrients that they add to their already superior soil produce enrich the vegetables and fruit that grow out of it with more nutrition than most anything you can buy. The vegetables we eat every day are grown in soil that’s depleted of minerals and nutrients. It happens naturally over time, and results in produce that has fewer nutrients. So Johnson has spent years developing a custom soil that better replicates the nutrient-rich soil from hundreds of years ago. It requires a delicate scientific balance so that the plants can properly absorb the nutrients, and a nutrient-rich soil equates to nutrient-dense produce.
That’s the ultimate motivation behind Johnson’s venture into raised-bed gardening — a healthier community. He may have a naturally “green thumb” but his life has been dedicated to “green concepts.” There is virtually no waste at Eastern Shore Forest Products. The company is committed to sustainability of the forests, and ingeniously find a way to utilize all parts of a tree.
The conservationist has been reaping the benefits of raised-bed gardening in his own backyard for over a decade. “It was an easy way for a busy guy like me to grow a garden without having to invest too much time,” he said. And as Johnson refined the system, he wanted to make it available to other people. He enjoyed watching his own daughter experience the excitement of tending her vegetable patch, and now you can share the thrill of getting back to nature and healthy eating with your own family.

Eastern Shore Forest Products, 3667 St. Lukes Rd., Salisbury, Md., Lazy Lagoon Rd.,

Frankford, Del., 1-800-WE-MULCH, www.expertgardensystems.com