Ruth Stout
Ruth Stout (14 June 1884 – 22 August 1980) was an American author best known for her "No-Work" gardening books and techniques.
During the Spring of 1930, her first year of gardening, Stout employed conventional techniques and practices in her garden with mixed results. She had to wait for someone else to come and plow the fields before she could start. The plowman was frequently late or delays would occur due to mechanical failures. Wasted time lessened the already short growing season and tried her patience. Furthermore, the manual labor involved in planting a traditional garden became more than she could handle by herself. In the Spring of 1944, Stout decided that she wasn't going to wait for the plowman, nor was she going to [[plow== on her own. Instead she planted the seeds and covered them, waiting to see what would happen, and discovered surprising success.
As the years progressed, Stout refined her techniques, eventually adopting a year-round mulch which virtually eliminated the labor associated with traditional gardening. Her minimalist approach spawned a long-running series of articles in Organic Gardening and Farming magazine as well as several books.
Links
- The Ruth Stout Method of Permaculture - YouTube Video