Garden the Ruth Stout way

I have no other choice. My garden is completely ruined. I don’t know exactly how it happened. It started with the chicken compost tea I so lovingly made and then poured all over the plants. My garden was booming and rich green with flowers and vegetables. After a few weeks though, things started to turn yellow. Actually almost everything looked either yellow, eaten by snails or just lame. I was trying my best to follow the watering restrictions (just 2x a week). I don’t think that helped my plants either.
Too much sun, not enough water, chicken manure tea too strong, damn snails around that I don’t want to kill.
I’m going to cover the ENTIRE THING with hay, put some of my worm compost in there and just start watering. When it gets cooler and I have time to focus on my garden I will get back to it. For now, my kitty needs all of my good mothering qualities.

Hay words

We are compiling hay dictionary, from Alfalfa to Zacate, a thesaurus of several hundred words, many to be found only in the most arcane crossword puzzles, and among them such lost beauties…

BRANDRETH A framework of wood for a hay-rick
CARF The breadth of one cutting in a rick
COCKLET A small cock (of hay, etc.).
COP A conical heap of … straw or hay. (Chiefly in Kent.)
COP The moveable frame attached to the front of a wagon carrying hay
CRATCH A rack or crib to hold fodder
CURRACK Panier slung on horses for carrying bulky loads, as hay
DESS, n A heap of hay
DESS, v To cut (a section of hay) from a stack
DOSSEL A wisp of hay or straw to stop up any aperture of a barn
FOG Grass growing after the hay-crop has been taken, aka AFTERMATHFOTHER A load; a cart-load (of hay, turf, wood, etc.).
HIPPLE A little heap of hay
KEMPLE A Scotch measure of hay, varying in amount
KNITCH A bundle of hay tied together; a sheaf or faggot.
LESPEDEZA A plant used in in the southern US as a hay crop
MATH A mowing; the amount of a crop mowed
MEDKNICHE The quantity of hay given in reward to the hayward, what he could lift with his middle finger as high as his knee.
[note : hay also = hedge and “hayward” = hedge-guardian (what the hay!)]
PLACK and RICKLES Rickles, biggest of all the cocks are run together into placks, shapeless heaps from which hay is carted—1871 G. M. HOPKINS Jrnls. & Papers (1959)
POMPLE Fodder for oxen used in the north of England in the 14th century
POUT, n A small round stack of hay or straw; = POOKSCREW (Orkney or Shetland) A small stack of hay
SHIRT, v To wrap inferior hay with superior hay, “as is done in Paris.”
SPRAIT, SPREAT, SPRET, SPRIT Coarse hay
SQUINANT Camel’s hay
STACK-GARTH A stack-yard, rick-yard
STADDLE Base of a stack, stack platform, marks left on ground when wet hay has been removed, scars on a face after smallpox(!)
TALLET Hay loft
TATE A handful of hay
TATH Hay from the manured field close to home
(Microsoft Word kept changing this TATH to THAT!)
TEW To shake or toss hay (and, with Great, a pretty village)
THEEK To cover or thatch a rick
THRIPPLE A movable frame to increase the carrying capacity of a hay cart
WATER-SOUCHY Coined by Horace Walpole to describe sodden hay
WUFFLER A kind of hay tedding machine
YAFFLE (Newfoundland dialect) Armful of hay, etc.

Still sitting out front covered by black garbage bags. I am afraid to start spreading it ever since someone (who lived near Ruth Stout) wrote that Ruth Stout’s garden looked like a big mess.

I also have chicken manure tea brewing in a huge container in the back. I will use that to fertilize the garden, I hope it works and doesn’t kill my plants. It’s been fermenting or whatever for almost 3 weeks…. want to smell it? ;)

I was taking to one of my coworkers and she has a garden and a mini chicken farm in her back yard. I mentioned that I needed hay to mulch my garden (to keep in the moisture). Yesterday she brought me a bail of hay (smells great, made a big mess in my car). I gave her a bag of red wiggler worms as payment for the hay.
Now I have this big bail of hay in the front of the apartment. I should probably get going and start spreading it all over the garden. I hope I can make it look attractive and have it be functional at the same time.

I am following the Ruth Stout method of gardening which works for me because
a. it’s new and that’s fun.
b. I can save water
c. It will add good things to my soil

Ruth Stout

Tired of composting, weeding and fertilizing? Try gardening the Ruth Stout “No Dig/No Work” way!

Who was Ruth Stout?

One of 9 children, Ruth Stout (1884-1980) lived in Kansas until she was 18, when she moved to New York City. At the age of 45, she married, moved to the country, and began gardening the hard way-according to the gardening “experts” of her day.

But she quickly realized that “their way” required lots of digging and hard work. She experimented with her own garden and realized that great flower and vegetable gardens could be grown with little or no digging, little or no work, and lots of hay!

Hay?

Yes. The secret to Ruth Stout’s “No Dig/No Work” method is keeping a thick mulch of any vegetable matter that rots on vegetable and flower gardens. Eight inches of rotting hay was the best thing you could do to a garden, she maintained. Spoiled low quality (not suitable to feed) hay is cheaper to buy and both fertilizes the soil and keeps the ground moist. In fact, hay keeps the ground so moist that Stout claimed she did not need to water her garden for 35 years!

Just hay?

No, she didn’t limit her mulching material to hay. She also tossed grass clippings, straw, leaves, pine needles, sawdust, weeds, and kitchen scraps (eggshells, etc.) directly onto her garden. She didn’t bother with a separate compost pile -her garden was her compost pile.

What was Ruth Stout’s advice for weeds?

Stout maintained that you shouldn’t bother weeding. When weeds begin to pop through the hay, just throw another armful of hay on them.

Does this “No Dig/No Work” method really work?

This non-invasive method worked so well for Stout that she grew all of the vegetables needed by herself and her husband for 14 consecutive years.

To “plant” potatoes, she simply threw sprouted potatoes on the ground, covered them with hay, and let them fend for themselves. They produced lots of healthy potatoes – the no dig/no work way! She planted seeds the same easy way.

But isn’t it work putting hay on a garden all the time?

Yes, there is some work involved, of course-buying hay, and then tossing it on the garden (she recommended starting with a healthy 8 inches of hay mulch, distributed evenly around the flower and vegetable gardens. After that, the only work would be tossing down more hay, whenever the height of the hay goes down too far, or whenever an unwanted plant (also known as a weed!) pops through.

So yes, there is some work involved. But think of the work you no longer have to do when you choose this effective gardening method!

No more hoeing (which can damage the soil structure and bring to the surface unwanted weed seeds that have been slumbering in the dirt for decades).

• No more weeding.
• No more composting.
• No more hard physical labor.
• Just lots of flowers, vegetables, and healthy soil.
• How can I learn more about Ruth Stout’s method of gardening?

Her published books include How To Have A Green Thumb Without An Aching Back – A New Method Of Mulch Gardening, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, and Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent.

Anything else interesting about Ruth Stout?

Stout preferred gardening “in the buff.” And Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe detective stories, was her brother.

Also, one night when she was 16 years old, Stout went around Topeka, Kansas with temperance leader Carrie Nation, smashing saloon windows. She later regretted this action, advising people to “Do what you want to do and don’t tell other people how to behave”