Success rates for
Stout’s permanent mulching are, as I indicated, somewhat weighted in that
anyone who tries it will likely do what’s necessary to make it function
because of a belief that it should be better than conventional
methods. Most people who declare themselves to be actively engaged in the
inactive non-work of permanent mulching a la Stout have bitter
memories of hoeing baked earth and weeding on hands and knees for sweaty
hours at a time. They sing the praises of new earthworm populations
under the mulch and the quietness of gardening without machinery (while
simultaneously recommending that you run your leaves through a mower
before adding it to the mix).
Ruth Stout had a soul
brother in contemporary Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese proponent of no-till
agriculture which he ascribed to traditions of good animal husbandry among
his countrymen. His classic One-Straw Revolution (Rodale 1978) is
the field and farm equivalent of Ruth’s minimalist methods for small scale
home gardening. Both will convince you that no-till or no-dig is natural
and productive - unless you’re just, as my teachers were, determined to
triple dig. Both Stout and Fukuoka have many current-day disciples. It is
not known whether they ever met.
Ruth was a genuine
24-carat eccentric who was known to garden in the nude (though she
generally donned a granny sack dress). She is quoted as having said, "The
un-mulched garden looks to me like some naked thing which for one reason
or another would be better off with a few clothes on." This is the kind of
remark that would have bugged the obsessive Rex and his alter ego, Nero
Wolfe. It’s likely that she enjoyed her role as a gardening gadfly. She
complained with self-deprecating amusement that when she walked in a room,
conversation suddenly turned to the subject of mulch. She could be
somewhat acidic herself. Here’s an answer she gave in an interview about
her method, in FAQs, How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic
Method, (Rodale, 1961):
“Now, for the drawbacks. People have complained to me that mulching does not kill everything. I
just got a letter from someone saying that it won’t kill cockleburs,
morning glories, Johnson grass, nut grass. She left out witch grass. I
know that it won’t kill that and neither will it pick your peas or plant
your seeds. I am just saying (in a friendly, sarcastic way) that just
because it does 100 things for you, should it be expected to do 101?”
Luckily for anyone who
wants to follow Ruth’s dynamic example, she wrote at least a dozen books
detailing her anti-method, including The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, Gardening Without Work for the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent and How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. She also composed
numerous articles for Organic Gardening between 1953 and 1971. Remarkably, giving an idea of how great a time-span her life’s work
covered, there is a Ruth Stout video in which she demonstrates her
permanent mulching method. Among her last written works were the
charmingly titled I Always Did It My Way, and Don’t Forget to
Smile, or How to Stay Sane and Fit Over Ninety. All of these materials
are available with a little web searching, though none are currently in
print. It should be said that her no-work method left her plenty of time
to write books. Her writing was human, happy and homespun, belying the
very analytical bent of her excellent mind.
