My buddy Ruth, the “no-dig Duchess.”

I have just stumbled into a magnificent new friend. Her name is Ruth Stout. Sadly she is no longer in this world becoming one with her garden back in 1980 at the age of 96. We could have had great fun. She hated weeding and spent all her time out-witting that drugery by heaping loads of mulch (her favorite was hay)thick on her garden in all seasons. Born in Kansas in 1884, Ruth was raised as a Quaker on her family’s farm. She was known for being brilliant with an eccentric edge. Back when gardens were wearily worked over with manicured precicion, Ruth threw her sprouting potatoes in with the roses and covered great portions of her yard with hay. She 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.” Ruth Stout’s much loved “No-Work Garden Book” is  all about using straw as a
really deep mulch; to control        
pests, to keep weeds down, to
keep things from drying out,
and as it breaks down, it’s
like adding compost to the
soil.  I discovered it does a
good job of holding off
weeds, reduces watering,
(especially helpful with
this summer’s drought)
and nurtures big, healthy
earthworms.

Ruth advises:

“I beg everyone to start with a mulch 8 inches deep; otherwise, weeds may come through, and it would be a pity to be discouraged at the very start. But when I am asked how many bales (or tons) of hay are necessary to cover any given area, I can’t answer from my own experience, for I gardened in this way for years, and therefore didn’t keep track of such details.

However, I now have some information on this from Mr. Dick Clemence, my A-Number-One adviser. He says, “I should think of 25 50-pound bales as about the minimum for 50 feet by 50 feet, or about a half-ton of loose hay. That should give a fair starting cover, but an equal quantity in reserve would be desirable.” That is a better answer than the one I have been giving, which is: You need at least twice as much as you would think.
What Should I Use for Mulch? Spoiled* or regular hay, straw, leaves, pine needles, sawdust, weeds, garbage — any vegetable matter that rots. *It’s hay that for some reason isn’t good enough to feed livestock. It may have, for instance, become moldy — if it was moist when put in the haymow — but it is just as effective for mulching as good hay, and a great deal cheaper. One man in a group I addressed was determined not to let me get away with claiming that it was all right to throw a lot of hay full of grass seeds on one’s garden, and the rest of the audience was with him. I was getting nowhere and was bordering on desperation, when, finally, I asked him: “If you were going to make a lawn, would you plant the grass seed
and then cover it with several inches of hay?” Put that way, he at last realized that a lot of hay on top of tiny seeds would keep them from germinating.
Now, you can lay chunks of baled hay between the rows of vegetables in your garden and, in a wet season, have a hearty growth of weeds right on top of the hay. To kill unwanted weeds all you need do is turn over the chunk of hay. This isn’t much of a job but some ardent disciples of my system are capable of getting indignant with me (in a nice way, of course) because they are put to that bother. I have relieved them of all plowing, hoeing, cultivating, weeding, watering, spraying and making compost piles; how is it that I haven’t thought of some way to avoid this turning over of those chunks of hay?”- Ruth Stout
Go Ruth:)…………………….want to get to know Ruth better?

She wrote for Mother earth news and has a bunch of books including the best known:

So this winter, when

you long to mess around in sun warmed soil- pick up a gardening book and dream.