The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book by Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence

I didn’t think I would be including gardening books in this reading journal. For one thing, I rarely read them cover to cover. I usually use them as reference material and inspiration (which I tend to forget or ignore), but Ruth Stout’s No-Work Garden Book was an exception.

It is wise to view the concept of “no work” gardening with a bit of skepticism, of course, and I didn’t really read this book hoping to master the secrets of growing vegetables without lifting a finger. I had heard of Stout through other gardening journals and sources and found her attitudes refreshing, her methods intriguing, and her words highly amusing. When I came across this book at the local library, I gave into my curiosity. When I had read the first few chapters, I knew I was going to read the whole book.

Stout’s “no work” gardening system involved permanently mulching her entire vegetable garden with leaves and hay. She just pushed aside the mulch to plant, never tilled, and pushed the mulch back around the plants as they grew. Since this mulch was organic matter, it constantly decayed and degraded and effectively served as a nutritive compost that continuously fed the soil and the plants. She did this for many years with fabulous success, much to the delight and dismay of other organic gardeners, experts, scientists and, eventually, followers and fans.

As intriguing as Stout’s methods are, the delightfully cheerful and sometimes quirky way she engages the reader is what made this book worth reading from beginning to end. Some of her anecdotes and phrasings are really funny and the text is surprisingly devoid of any of the crankiness or I-told-you-so gloating you might expect from a successful gardener of a certain age who has become (deservedly) set in her ways. The book was fun to read and I felt like I would have loved to have a conversation or two about gardening, or anything else, really, with Ruth Stout.



Coming soon: On the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now