By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

BENTON, Ky. — Gardening is a passion for many, and it only takes a few minutes of conversation with Bill Orlowski of Marshall County to see how strong his enthusiasm is for it.

For him, being in the vegetable garden has been something he has done most of his life, but an arthritic knee ailment that keeps him from kneeling at times threatened to take all that away. “I tell people that if you take gardening away from me, you just might as well bury me now,” Orlowski said.

Luckily, the 70-year-old Illinois native won’t have to give up his love for growing things. He has just raised his gardening to another level, literally, by way of waist-high garden beds built by placing wooden box containers on stands.

“I built one last fall around the end of September and planted some cool-weather crops,” he said. “This was experimental, so I didn’t go overboard. I planted some cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, turnips and radishes, all cool-weather (vegetables), and they grew really well.”

Orlowski was so impressed with his first try at gardening this way, he built 12 more boxes last winter. “Now that I have these, I want to build three more and that will give me enough to do what I want to do,” he said.

Lincoln Martin, Marshall County agriculture and natural resources extension agent, has worked with Orlowski for many years on projects, including the extension Master Gardeners. He said the idea makes sense: “If you have many experiences with the kind of challenge that Bill has had, it’ll stop you from trying. So bringing this up to where you can work on it makes a lot of sense to me.
“There’s a lot of thought and innovation that went into building these high-rise raised beds. I can see how this has a lot of application because it minimizes having to crawl around on the ground,” Martin added.

The table garden boxes are 32 inches wide, eight feet long and 12 inches deep, though Orlowski suggests not filling them up once the soil settles. Ultimately he ended up with 9.5 to 10 inches of soil in each box and said he doesn’t have anything planted with longer roots than that.

The bottoms are made with decking material that Orlowski refers to as “five-quarters” and placed with 1/8-inch space between them to allow for wood expansion during the winter. He lined the containers with plastic containing slits for drainage and layered the soil mixture in four-inch increments so as not to have to mix it once the box was full. He has also tested the soil to make sure he has not lost nutrients because of the excessive rainfall in the area of late.
“So far, everything I have in them is growing great.” Orlowski said. “I have to be doing something right, but it is a learning process.”
He is keeping a log of what he does and when he does it, to pass information to others as they need it. “I’ve made some mistakes, which I have corrected, but I didn’t have anyone to tell me any different,” said Orlowski.

His green beans are ready for harvesting and he said it was a godsend not to have to bend down to pick the beans.

While Orlowski has built the boxes to fit his physical needs, they can be modified for those with other limitations, including people in wheelchairs. In fact it was an acquaintance in a wheelchair who told him he would be able to garden if he had a table at the right height. That planted the idea of the boxes in the back of Orlowski’s mind.

“That was the seed and I always remembered that,” he said. Orlowski noted for those in wheelchairs, the width of the box should be smaller to allow for proper reach.

As it’s his first year at this endeavor, Orlowski said there are still many things he doesn’t know – but, so far so good – and he has received e-mails and letters from interested people. One thing that does trouble him is he has not received any questions from young people, a trend he fears will cause gardening at some point to become a thing of the past.

“If gardening doesn’t get passed on to the younger generation, it’s going to be like sewing: A lost art,” Orlowski said. His wife, Sue, teaches sewing and has very few young people as students. “If push came to shove and people had to start fending for themselves and start gardening again, I’m afraid we would have some people starve to death.”

Orlowski still has a conventional garden, and he explains that his table gardens can actually produce twice as much thanks to intensive gardening – planting items closer together and varieties that are smaller in nature.  He also has fewer weeds at this point and, of course, easier access.

“I’ve learned so much and that’s why I’m keeping notes,” he said. “I don’t have to till, I don’t have to hoe or rake. In just this short period of time, there’s no way I would go back to a conventional garden. This is so user-friendly.”

As a Master Gardener, teaching others about gardening is not foreign to Orlowski even though table gardens are new. His philosophy is if it doesn’t benefit humanity, then it’s not a good idea. From the look of his first season, he’ll be teaching others about table gardening for a long time.

For those interested in knowing more, e-mail Orlowski  at borlow@mchsi.com or to see a video of his garden, go to www.youtube.com/ukagriculture#p/u/0/D4BgcJ6qV24