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Re: [GWL]: Ruth Stout

Hi!  With all the talk about Ruth Stout, I want to share the book review I
wrote of Ruth Stout's classic book, "How to Have a Green Thumb Without an
Aching Back." And I can,  because I only sold one-time rights when it was
published.   -- Betty

Copyright 1998 by Betty Mackey
bbmackey@prodigy.net

[This part came after several other reviews of books for which I had picked
an aptly descriptive word.]

There is no one word to describe my all-time favorite garden book, "How to
Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back," written by the inimitable Ruth
Stout in 1952, and published in many editions and printings. My paperback
copy is dated 1972 and is priced at $1.45.  Ruth Stout is the sister of
famous mystery writer Rex  Stout, but these days her books may well outsell
his. Unselfconsciously brimming with energy, humor, and charm, she happily
tells how she grows food and flowers on a 55-acre farm, first working
herself practically into the hospital with her energetic digging and
weeding, and later inventing the no-work, incredibly rewarding mulching
method. But the method is so easy that 90 percent of the book is story
telling.

She opens with mutterings at what other garden writers had written, which
she suspects has nothing to do with reality.
"My ambition," she says, "is to write this book without a single statement
which can be muttered at. I will try to accomplish this by relating my own
experiences, letting the reader do the conclusion-drawing."

"This does not mean, however, that my mind isn't crowded with opinions and
convictions. It is. For instance, eleven years ago I put into practice a
revolutionary method of gardening, and if I were put in charge of the world
I would make it compulsory for every gardener to give it a three-year trial.
After three years I don't think anyone would go back to the old, cumbersome
procedure. If someone did, if someone deliberately chose to work ten times
as long and hard as he needed, chose to spend more money and have more
headaches than necessary with less satisfactory results, I wouldn't
interfere. I doubt if there would be enough of them in the whole world to
fill a medium sized mental institution."

Born in Kansas, she was a confirmed New Yorker when she married Fred at age
45, in the June of 1929. They were weekending with friends in then-rural
Connecticut. One thing led to another and by 2:00 PM the first day they had
agreed to buy a huge, run-down farm. She became so busy trying to take care
of it that she took no time for acquiring knowledge about it. She has a lot
of fun recounting her many early mistakes and few unexpected successes.
Fourteen years later, her results were still mixed but she talked only of
gardening. She says, "As Fred put it, Ruth may not have a green thumb, but
she has a green tongue."

But now comes the change  to no-dig, all-over mulch gardening.  She has
begun to cover the garden with a six to eight inch layer of spoiled hay. At
this point she says, "When the farmers around here take leave of you their
parting words are almost never 'Goodby' or 'So Long,' but 'Take it easy.'
Several years passed before I learned to follow this sensible advice; I hope
you will be more open to it than I was."

Now a confirmed mulcher, she crows, "I wouldn't be afraid to broadcast
dandelion seeds all over my garden. The poor things would die of old age
before they had a chance to reproduce their kind."

Year by year the ground becomes richer and fluffier, and Stout's vegetables
are sensational. "I simply spread mulch where I want the compost to be
eventually. It rots and becomes rich dirt, with the valuable by-products of
keeping down weeds, keeping the earth soft, holding moisture and eliminating
plowing and spading, hoeing and cultivating."

Well, the mulch method is popular today, no longer a radical breakthrough,
but Ruth Stout's book is just as fresh and amazing as ever, seamlessly
bringing her friends, family, neighbors, and rural surroundings into the
reader's own interior life, where they amiably stay for a very long time.

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