In the early 1980s I
went to Sussex, England to study small-scale agriculture at a Rudolf
Steiner center called Emerson College. The course trained people to
demonstrate good gardening methods in third world villages. I learned
three ways to garden: the right way, the wrong way, and the easy way. The
easy way was Ruth Stout's way.
The wrong way was
obvious: industrialized farming, including the use of chemical fertilizers
and poisonous pesticides, leading to the de-naturing of the precious soil. Everyone knew that this was destructive, and had been the downfall of many
a third world village project. It was a given that a better method
was required.
The right way was, of
course, what they taught us at Emerson. It was a tough row to hoe, because
the instructors were proponents not merely of digging, not just
double-digging, but triple digging. This was a technique based on the
ancient small-scale agricultural practices of hearty Gallic truck farmers
on the outskirts of Paris as well as of terribly finicky, upper-class
British rose growers and formal gardeners. Triple digging is organic and
fanatical. It's done at Wisley and Kew. It involves cutting into the earth
three spits (spade depths) down and systematically inserting various kinds
of material from the most decayed compost – horse manure, preferably
French - to the coarsest new-cut straw. It rebuilds soil and if you
respect the earth and love to work (those with back problems, take
warning) this is a rewarding method over the long haul. Along with
“biodynamic preparations” made from diluted compost, triple digging
promises new, permanent soil vigor after a season or two. Certainly my
teachers thought so. That was the “right way.”
Much as I wanted to be a
good student, I was far more attracted to the "easy way," the less
invasive approach of Ruth Stout – especially after a few weeks of the
grueling physical labor involved in Steiner's soil building technique. The
easy way was the precise antidote to all that physical hardship. American
Ruth Stout called it “no dig, no work.” Even our excessively Euro-centric
teachers gave grudging kudos to Ms. Stout and her “permanent mulch” method. Stout was sufficiently kooky for the Steiner followers (also known as anthroposophists) to embrace unabashedly. She had a near-religious respect
for the natural environment and, most importantly, believe it or not, her
method does work. With provisos.
Born in Kansas in 1884,
Ruth was a Quaker whose family worked a farm. She lived into her nineties,
died in 1980, and developed a reputation for being brilliant, if
eccentric. She laid claim to having smashed saloons to smithereens along
with temperance queen Carrie Nation. The dates fit and no-one ever proved
otherwise. Her famous brother Rex was also a gardener, entrepreneur and
author. As most everyone knows, he penned the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Wolfe,
who has his own website as though he were a real guy (he wasn’t), was
portrayed by Rex as a morbidly obese highly cerebral solver of mysteries
who raised rare orchids in a penthouse roof garden. In real life Rex
thought his sister crazy for her no-dig technique, calling her yard,
affectionately one assumes, a “garbage dump.” But as one writer has
correctly pointed out, Rex had servants to help him compost, and he was as
strict about his composting as his hero Nero was about schedules for
watering the orchids. Whereas Ruth had only herself and a rather dotty
philosopher/carpenter partner, Richard Clemence, who probably wasn’t the
brawniest gnome in the garden.
So Ruth developed, or
rediscovered, a gardening method that she claims, properly, was invented
by God. For it was God who decreed that each year leaves would fall and
cover the bare earth, and that in the spring, plants germinated under
their blanket of leaves would miraculously regenerate. From this and other
simple observations, Ruth decided that everyone should do what God does,
and cover their garden area with “permanent mulch.” And then, as she had,
they would discover that "There is peace in the garden. Peace and
results."
What, precisely, was she
doing that excited so much dinner table conversation among homesteaders
almost a generation ago? Precious little, by her own report. It was if
anything a kind of deconstruction of gardening as it is generally
understood. Permanent mulch, once built (and continually added to) simply
lies in the garden between and among your plants - permanently. Now often
called “The Stout Method” (though Ruth never named it and attributes the
title to her faithful Richard), the technique ranged from the crude
propagation of potatoes by just throwing them on the ground and leaving
them to fend for themselves, to a rather more sophisticated packing order
for mulch.
