Hey guys, Derek and Paula here and if you've been following along on our
previous videos you'll know that we've been really busy all summer, doing a lot
of really hard work trying to get our little homestead going. Trying to dig
trenches filled them with wood cover them with dirt just so that we can grow
some plants. So far that's worked out really well but we've also been reading
a lot about another method which is WAY easier. It's called the Ruth stout method
and it's all about the hay. So today we're gonna play in hay. But before we get
started let's have a quick recap of our garden experimentation thus far. We
started out in the spring by building a hugelkultur mound. Hugelkulture culture is a
method of permaculture that emulates the natural processes found in a typical
forest. We've created several videos which explain in detail how this works
but essentially we dug a trench filled it with dead and rotting wood a bunch of
other organic material and then buried it all with the topsoil that we'd
removed from the trench in the first place. The end result was a self
fertilizing vegetable garden that requires little water, no weeding and
provides an abundance of food. By the end of the growing season we were so
impressed by the results of our hugelkultur mound that we decided to build
two more, but this time with the help of a backhoe. As you can see we've now
smoothed out the soil on the new mounds and covered them with a protective layer
of hay so that we're ready to plant next spring. But as you can also see we've got
a lot of extra room in our garden area and that brings us to another method of
permaculture known as the Ruth Stout method. Now let me tell you a little bit
about Ruth, because honestly she was incredible. She was born in Kansas in
1884 but moved to New York when she was 18. While there she dabbled in an
eclectic assortment of jobs, for instance she worked as a nurse, a bookkeeper, a
secretary, a business manager, a factory worker, a lecturer and debate coordinator.
She opened a small tea shop, worked for a fake mind-reading act and, as if that
wasn't enough, she even spent some time in Russia in the early 1920s to assist
in famine relief. But it wasn't until 1930 when she and her new husband
settled down on a 55 acre farm in Connecticut, that she finally found her
true passion, gardening. For over a decade she followed conventional gardening
wisdom by using ploughs, tillers, chemical fertilizers and lots of hard work. But
one day in early spring while waiting for her plow man to show up
she had an epiphany. If so many other plants grow easily without any of these
unnatural additions, why couldn't she just treat her garden the same way? So
she threw some seeds on her unplowed soil covered them lightly and was
astonished by the results. What she discovered is that most of the
traditional hard work of gardening was completely unnecessary and in many cases
even detrimental to the success of her harvests. Over time she refined her
method of 'lazy gardening' and concluded that by simply covering her seeds in a
thick layer of mulch she could avoid all digging, tilling, weeding, watering and
fertilizing. Ruth would later say that, "I don't do anything I don't want to do unless I have to and I
don't have to, so there we are". She experimented with many types of natural mulches but found that
good old-fashioned hay was the best. The basic premise behind the Ruth Stout
method is quite simple, cover the ground with hay. When asked how much hay was
needed Ruth would stoically reply more. Over time the lower layers decompose and
naturally add nutrients to the soil. Meanwhile, the upper layers help to keep
the soil cool in the summer, warm in the winter, prevents evaporation between
rains and smother out any weeds. It's recommended that you prepare this type
of garden in the fall and then begin planting the following spring, by simply
pushing some of the hay aside and laying the seeds on the fresh fertile soil
underneath. Every spring and fall more hay is added and the cycle continues.
This is what's often referred to as building soil. Because every time a new
layer of hay is added it replaces the bulk of the previous year's mulch which
has since composted into rich organic soil for planting. And once again you
never dig, till, water or weed. No fertilizers are necessary and rather
than becoming depleted over time, your soil nutrients actually improve with
every passing season. So it was armed with this information that we set out to
find a local source of inexpensive hay. And luckily for us our brother-in-law
Andy, who you might remember as the grower of the giant white Armenian
cucumber, knew exactly who to ask. As it turns out his parents had a huge amount
of hay in the loft of their barn which had accidentally gotten wet, meaning was
no longer appropriate for animal feed. But spoiled hay still makes perfect
mulch so we drove out to the farm, crammed as much as we could in Andy's
truck and brought it back to our place. Ok, now that we have everything we need
let's get gardening. You may recall that our garden layout includes space for six 30
foot by 4 foot raised beds, as well as one larger bed. These three have already
been used for hugelkultur mounds and in the interest of experimentation, we've
decided to use these two spaces for Ruth Stout based, hay only gardens. We began by
marking the perimeter of the beds with string. This was just so that we could
keep all of the hay contained within our desired dimensions. Next we carried over
a couple of bales, cut the twine and began pulling them apart. We did our best
to fluff up the tightly packed hay as we went and slowly lay it out the first
layer. From what we've read 8 inches seems to be a good depth when first
constructing the garden bed and in the interest of keeping things consistent we
created a simple measuring stick. Then by plunging the stick into the garden in
different locations we could quickly and easily see that a second layer was
necessary. So back to the hay bales for more mulch and after a few more minutes
of fluffing and layering we measured again and we're good to go. So there we
go, two Ruth Stout gardens both complete in less than an hour. So what'd you think
was that easier than hugelkultur? Um, YES. So, now unfortunately we'll have to wait
until next year to see if they work as well as who hugelkultur but they're
definitely easier to set up. And you may notice that we've still got
space for one more of these long Gardens over there and a big one behind us but
you'll have to wait to see what we do with that. See you next time.
Oh wait, there's one more thing I'd like to mention about Ruth Stout before you
go and this is perhaps the most important part. You see despite all the
interesting things she did during her youth, Ruth was 45 years old before she'd
ever even thought about gardening. And she was in her 60's before discovering
the method which would later adopt her name and make her famous. And even with
such a late start Ruth lived to be 96 which meant she had
over three decades to publish multiple books, go on countless speaking tours and
explore and share her passion with everyone she encountered. I point this
out because I think it's a really good reminder that it's never too late to try
something new, find your passion and make a difference.
So no matter where you are in your journey I encourage you to get out there
and plant some seeds, because you just never know what might grow.
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