TRANSCRIPT: http://backtoreality.org/2020/06/22/faq-deep-mulch-vegetable-gardening-ruth-stout-method/
In this video I’d like to answer some of your most frequently asked questions about the Ruth Stout method, and about growing no-dig vegetables under mulch.
Questions:
1. (1:00) Where are you located?
2. (1:34) When you say “hay”, do you actually mean “straw”?
3. (4:02) What do you mean by “spoiled hay”?
4. (5:29) Does deep mulch eliminate ALL weeding?
5. (6:40) What about weed seeds that come IN the hay?
6. (7:41) How much water?
7. (8:18) What about “unwanted visitors”?
8. (9:19) Are the potatoes less nutritious or less flavourful?
9. (10:05) Can you grow other vegetables like this?
10. (11:27) Make sure your natural mulch is ACTUALLY natural
Previous videos:
Plant Hardiness Zone, Rainfall, and Other Important Information
Where We Get FREE Garden Mulch
Our Deep-Mulch Vegetable Garden After TWO MONTHS of Complete Neglect
Companion Planting Asparagus and Strawberries (No-till, Ruth Stout)
Spring Prep in our “No-Work” Garden, and an EASIER way to Spread Mulch
Preparing our Hugelkultur Garden for Winter: Chop and Drop
The Ruth Stout Method of Permaculture
337 lbs of Potatoes! NO digging, NO watering, and VERY LITTLE work!
Planting Potatoes in a Ruth Stout Permaculture Garden (QUICK and EASY)
Results from our NO DIG and NO WATER potato experiment (Ruth Stout Method)
Companion Planting Carrots, Radishes and Onions in a Ruth Stout (HAY-ONLY) Garden
Results and Lessons Learned from our Carrot, Onion, and Radish Experiment
Winter Ruth Stout Permaculture Update and HAY vs STRAW
33 Comments
Dry Corn leaves body parts Good For mulching..
Straw works great in cob or Adobe homes.
you should mention that if the hay does have seeds you can simple smother them out with more hay on top and that reapplying the mulch annually or even during the season may be helpful or necessary. otherwise good information.
Hmmmm. CC isn't working.
Wanted to read, not listen because hubby still sleeping.
Oh well, ❤️🇨🇱🇺🇸✝️🙏
You guys are doing some great work. It’s also nice to see videos from my area (5b Eastern Ontario). Keep up the good work.
"Expiry date….. Yesterday" HAHAHA love your sense of humour! thank you for the video, much appreciated XO
Hay on my garden, got moldy and smelled terrible, I had to take it off and get it out of my yard
Do you need to rotate Ruth Stout gardens?
Hay is better the plants need to enrich the soil agree that anything is better
Thank you for your very well-researched and informative videos. I just found your channel when searching for information about the Ruth Stout method. Her method and Paul Gautschi's method sound like they would work very well for me. I just need to find a good source of straw and/or wood chips near me. (I will check out your linked videos.) I will continue to watch your videos to learn more. I really appreciate what you are both doing and for sharing such great information. (I am in Indiana, by the way.)
I am so glad you explained the difference between straw and hay. Thank you
Straw seeds. my daughters like to sift through the straw bales to find the big seed shafts. They collect them and plant them as cat grass for our cats. lol
What are the right questions to ask about hay/straw and what are the right answers? We did straw bale gardening and the first year it was great. got an organic fertilizer and things grew wonderfully without weeds. The next year, we couldnt find …or remember the name of the fertilizer that we uses and the bales seemed to be wound differently. Needless to say, we did not have good growth results.
over time the hay will break down and become the soil so any weed seeds there will be exposed to that soil. is that correct? I love the no-dig potatoes and am going to try this method even though Im super allergic to hay & straw. Im more "allergic" to weeding and hoeing lol!
Hello from Baltimore Ontario! So excited I discovered your channel today! I now know what to do with last seasons left over hay. Thanks for the great content.
Some problems I've encountered with R.S. method is that it makes a wonderful winter home for small rodents; upon planting in spring I find an infestation of rodents and their trails beneath the hay…and it's not just in certain years. I do get the cloud of spores in the dry hay, and weird black mushrooms grow in the wet hay. It is an easier way to garden but I am concerned about the black mold spores getting on my growing vegetables; will they still be healthy to eat or will I be consuming black mold spores?
In Southern Ontario: In regard to your strawberries, I would also suspect they were either not viable or too weak. Last fall I decided to attempt to smother the strawberries that were growing around my blueberry bushes by burying them under 8 inches of wood chip. The berries were old and riddled with bind weed and smothering seemed like the best option for starting over. I did not lay down cardboard because the mulch was very thick. This spring much to my surprise, both the strawberries and the bindweed had no trouble finding their way through all that wood chip. And if old strawberries can do that, then hay should not have been a problem. This year is my first time using hay on some of my no dig raised beds. I am amazed that the beds have needed so little water in spite of several early heat waves of 30 degrees C. There have been some slugs and I also have lots of toads! I am using it for tomatoes, peppers and melons, so we'll see how it goes. Love your videos!
I love your animations. Very cute.
Love your videos. Your a great teacher and speaker. Than you!
Your videos have the best animations!!
We cannot use any of the hay or straw from our area because they are all sprayed with persistent herbicides. Lesson we learned the hard way. We use composted wood chips from tree companies and our system is mature enough now that we can rely pretty much solely on chop and drop. The fine Myakka sand that we started with is now rich soil! Thank you for sharing!
do you think bell pepper / capsicum grow here? And I live in Bangladesh, will this method work in our condition?
excellent video!!!
Love, love, love your videos!! I love how you explain everything, show your successes and "mistakes" aka experiences. And I especially like your graphics, demonstrating what happens under ground and over time. More videos please!
In regards to the seeds of weeds within the hay, if you ask the farmer for purchasing the 2nd or 3rd "cutting" of the year, you should have less weed growth within the hay. It is what the animals (cows & horses), which I had been familiar with when growing up on a mid-west farm in Northern Indiana. The animals preferred the later cutting over the first cuttings bales of hay.
I garden in a hot, dry, windy climate where wheat straw is readily available and cheap. I use it to mulch heavily and have found that it packs down just fine and will stay in place on my beds all summer and even through the winter. And, FYI, damp bales of hay and straw can spontaneously combust, so it's best to break up any damp ones.
Great presentation! …… Thank You!
Helpful and informative.
just found you guys. so quick question; have you used grass clippings as a big part of the mulching? We have so much leftover lawn clippings, and thought it might be good to start now, then this fall apply hay/straw over the clippings this fall.
Extremely helpful, thank you!
I use any plant matter available, including my neighbor's field of weeds/grasses plus collected leaves and any other random bags of fairly soft plant mater. But I have almost no problem with weeds comming up later and I've been doing this for over 10 years. . . each year there are fewer unwanted re-seeding. This may because of the depth of mulch? Or it may be because I have only a small city lot garden to tend so the amount of unwanted sprouting is not significant enough to me – I don't have to deal with a large field. But no till, heavy mulch is the way to go . . as Ruth Stout told us.
Can I start this method now or do I have to wait until autumn?
Do you add any lime to help with the breakdown process and making the nutrients more readily available to the soil?