Ruth Stout Method

Ruth Stout (1884-1980) was a pioneering home gardener, an advocate of no-till. I heard of no-till for farming a long time ago, but didn't know what the advantages were. Simply put, they are reduced erosion, water conservation, reduced labor/fuel costs, and (here's the key) improved soil health. According to CropCare:

"Tilling destroys fungi and bacteria that would otherwise build communities in the soil and feed on its organic matter. Leaving the soil undisturbed lets the living things within it restore the nutrient levels that crops need to thrive."

Scale it down from a farm field to a garden, add a thick mulch of hay and leaves, and essentially you have the Ruth Stout Method which she started developing 100 years ago and started writing about 70 years ago. I first heard of her a few months ago when Kevin and Jacque of Epic Gardening demonstrated her method of raising potatoes — throw some seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with a mound of hay. No digging. Somehow it works, as proven in the Epic Gardening video.

Two of Ruth's books are on Kindle Unlimited now so I'm reading them for free. Without getting too deep in the weeds on the specifics of her method (read the books yourself), the following sentence from "The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book" (1971) summed up my feelings about the past 6-7 months of reading publications and watching videos about gardening in general and companion planting in particular:

"My quarrel with people who write about gardening (or any subject, for that matter) is that they often state as a fact something which they do not know to be a fact."

I'm going to plant marigolds, nasturtiums, basil and various herbs in and next to the greenhouse next year, plants which supposedly are helpful in the battle against harmful pests. But I don't know if any of this will do any good. At worst, I will have nice flowers and flavorful herbs scattered through the plantings of tomatoes and strawberries, and I will have to spray the pests with soap and Neem oil.

Her other book on Kindle Unlimited now is "Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, The Busy and the Indolent" (1963). Who can't get behind that? Since the two books are compilations of articles she wrote over the years, there is some duplication.

A prominent modern advocate of no-till (aka no-dig) gardening is Charles Dowding of Somerset, England. He has written a few dozen books, and one of them is now on Kindle Unlimited, "Charles Dowding's Veg Journal: Expert no-dig advice, month by month" (2014). (Note that Amazon frequently changes the titles which are free to read on Kindle Unlimited.)