The birthday gift of “The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book” was intended as a joke, bought less for the radical home horticulture advice inside than for the jacket photo of the 80-odd-year-old author, sprawled across a pile of loose hay like some kind of antique farm pinup gal.
The goof demanded at least a peek at the evangelical columns culled from a long career writing for the old Rodale title Organic Farming and Gardening. By the time I closed the covers, I felt like I’d been to a tent revival and my garden would be saved.
Long before sheet composting, lasag na mulching and permaculture became common topics of over-the- garden-fence conversation, there was Ruth Stout, advocating that home growers throw away their poison weed and insect sprays (smelly and too much work) and chemical fertilizers (smelly and too much work) and abandon annual tilling and regular cultivating (too much work and too much work) for thick layers of mulch.
She proselytized for the mulch’s water-saving and soil-building powers, standing up — feet planted firmly on 8 inches of hay — to the science of the day that discounted the felicity of gardening and of Ruth Stout herself.
She died at age 96, and her techniques allowed her to garden into her dotage. Perhaps they will do the same for me. Dana Coffield
