Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Time to Practice Ruth Strout’s Laziness
By Milt Gross
May 27, 2007 - 8:07:50 PM

I came across Ruth Strout’s book, Gardening without Work, in 1971, the first summer we had lived in our new modular house on Swan Lake -- with just enough yard space for a garden.

I wanted a garden but have no idea why I did -- and probably had no idea then why I wanted one. But I chose a spot and started digging with a shovel and pitchfork. This was my first attempt at gardening, and so went at it as had my father in his 12- by 15-foot garden in suburban Philadelphia. Dad didn’t bother with the shovel, just the pitchfork, I supposed because he was more experienced.

I found I needed the shovel to break through the weeds and their roots. I also found it to be a very slow, labor intensive process, which made me ready for my great discovery of Ruth Strout. I remember that little dug row, surrounded on both sides by swiftly growing weeds and grass. I even planted a few tomatoes and watched as they worried themselves into not growing because of the shade of those weeds and grass.

At about that time, our chemical-gardening, realtor neighbor, who took a kind of fatherly interest in us because he had sold us the lot on part of the farm he had inherited and the modular house that was identical to his, showed me how to operate his rototiller.

Bob was only too happy to loan his ‘tiller, but I didn’t learn why until the next winter when he also loaned me his snowblower. He apparently had already planned that I, a teacher with shorter work days, would have time to snowblow our driveway and then his during his longer days at the office. I thought his plans were fine, as snowblowing was a lot easier than shoveling, so I was happy to snowblow both our driveways.

And that summer I was happy to borrow his ‘tiller, although he ‘tilled his own chemically induced garden. You wouldn’t trust a brand new gardener with your garden, would you? I wouldn’t.

But happily I found Ruth Strout before Bob taught me how to dump all those chemicals on the good earth. Ruth told me -- her book was obviously meant just for me -- that all I needed to do was turn the soil over once and then cover the ground with grass clippings, the very best fertilizer not on the market. She was right about how good the grass worked as fertilizer and as mulch, covering the weeds and turning the good earth into much better earth with many more earthworms crawling around right beneath the grass.

In the spring, by golly, Ruth also was right, just scrape away some of the mulch to open a row for planting.

But somehow her book failed to tell me that it would be impossible to gather enough grass clippings from my half-acre lawn to actually cover the garden, or how much work that part of Gardening without Work meant. My garden was a perfect experiment, part a model well-mulched garden and the greater part not mulched at all and a weedy model of not-mulched gardens.

I bragged to all who would listen about my well-mulched part of the garden, not bothering to tell them that most of it wasn’t mulched. The mulched tomatoes were literally great as were the potatoes, although I didn’t know why the potatoes did so well as they were simply hilled and covered as in any garden. (I’ve since learned to use less space and cram veggies in close together so the veggie plants themselves function as mulch to keep weeds down and the earth moist.)

I couldn’t keep up with the peas or beans, picking those peas just ahead of the speed at which our family of six ate them, and letting those beans go until they had ripened and dried on the plants, as Ruth had advised. Then, as my mouth watered for those baked beans which I had learned to love at my very first Saturday-night grange supper in Albany when I lived in Bethel in 1965, I began yanking those bean plants out of the ground.

My mouth watered less as it dried from thirst, caused by all that Gardening without Work. Then, dry-mouthed, I took that wheelbarrow filled with bean plants to the cellar where I stalled off doing what next had to be done before I could eat those baked beans on a Saturday night. (Thankfully, the rural Maine Good Old Days were gone, so we didn’t have to eat those beans on Sunday morning too.)

Then I took the time a week or so later to bang those plants inside a bucket to allow the dried and loose beans to fall, just as Ruth said they would. But most of them wouldn’t, so I banged awhile and then picked. This part of Gardening without Work I remember so well, I now plan always to eat my baked beans right out of the can, the way God had meant them to be eaten in the first place, assuming He is actually a merciful God as nearly everyone says He is.

The carrots were all right, growing so slowly I thought they had perished from a lack of chemicals until they peeked their little feathery heads up and took off agrowing. I dug them out on a muddy day. My first rule of Gardening without Work was never dig your carrots -- or potatoes -- when you should because that would have been Gardening with too little Work. Instead, I waited until the September rains had pretty much muddied the garden.

The fun of digging potatoes in the mud was without description, as well as without Gardening without Work. But over the years I’ve learned to do that non-work before the mud takes over, which is an advantage of hanging around long enough to become an Old Duffer.

Veggies from the organic garden always taste better, and even Bob admitted that. We have been so spoiled by organic veggies that, even when we have none of our own so have to buy them at the store, we purchase organic veggies, especially tomatoes and potatoes. Organic potatoes are so good they actually taste like potatoes, much nicer for our Sunday homefries-and-eggs breakfasts than those chemicalized (a brand new organic-garden-originated verb) potatoes that seem so mushy and tasteless.

The corn was easy, but not until several years into my organic gardening venture and the spring I pulled my back. My students took mercy on my hands-and-knees organic gardening. They came to our house on a Saturday morning and, since it wasn’t homework, planted my corn for me -- their own way.

It was the first -- and last -- corn I ever had that grew in circles instead of rows.

I’ve also learned the other secret of Gardening without Work, the one Ruth emphasized so well. Be sure and buy lots of straw for mulch -- not hay, as hay sprouts seeds -- and dump it on your organic garden liberally. I even sprinkle it lightly where the veggie seeds are waiting under the soil to spring to life, just enough to hold the water in but not heavy enough to smother the seeds.

Water. That’s the real secret of organic Gardening without Work. Except for the first obedient-to-the-seed-package soaking with the non-organic hose, I never, never, never water my organic garden. Neighbors wait gleefully for my garden to dry up, but instead it thrives. The mulch holds down the weeds and slowly turns to earth, the actual good earth that is black and home to lots of earthworms even on a hot, dry July day. The mulch also prevents the water already in the ground from evaporating, and that underground water rises to nourish those organic veggie roots.

But my real joy in organic gardening is what I haven’t yet dared to do. Ruth wrote that visitors will invariably look at your garden and "pooh pooh" all that mulch, which you have just told them is the best thing for your garden. But she has an organic cure for those prophets of pooh pooh, she just throws some mulch at them. If they complain about that, she just throws more.

I can’t wait to try it. If you want to visit my organic garden, you’re certainly welcome. But, we just moved this spring and I’m working on a new garden without work. So, please postpone your visit until I have enough mulch on hand.

Today I’m taking advantage of another organic-gardening labor-saving practice. I’m writing this column instead of raising my body temperature and feeding the blackflies by working out there in that Gardening-without-Work organic garden.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@earthlink.net.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2007