During the break at the spring opening event there was some conversation about the benefits of NOT distributing the soil vs. rototilling. I came across this article on No Dig gardening. It includes links to some YouTube videos and a book.
Posted for you enjoyment.
The WCC will again be providing each gardener with one bale of mulch hay. We should have a delivery within a few weeks if all goes as planned. For those of you who are new to gardening or to the benefits of mulching, I’d like to relate my own introduction to the subject. In the late 1960s, I picked up a book titled How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back (1955) authored by Ruth Stout. Another– Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent (1961),– solidified her reputation as “the mother of mulch” and was among the dozen books she authored promoting the method. Stout was born in 1884 and died at age 96 having spent many years practicing what she preached — a no-till method of gardening that today is recommended by many experts. Stout’s writing is enormously entertaining, informative and practical. She promoted a technique of deep mulching that is labor-saving, soil-improving, water-conserving and permanent, using any vegetable matter that rots! But she was quite insistent that the very best mulching material anyone could use was spoiled hay. (Lucky Us!) She had her critics, of course. As stated in an article about Stout’s methods in homestead.org, “Basic and boiled down to its essence, the Stout method is no till, no dig, no water, no weed, & no composting–but not no work!”
Stout’s mulching method lends itself especially well to small garden plots such as we have in the WCC, eliminating the need for roto-tilling. I noticed that several of Stout’s books have been reprinted and are available for purchase. And of course, there are many more recently published books on the subject. But I have a soft spot in my heart for this eccentric, opinionated lady who even in her 90s could be seen tossing sections of hay bales about her garden.
Submitted by: Anne Kirschmann
Update: Another link to Ruth Stout’s mulching technique: https://www.goveganic.net/article182.html