Ruth Stout style market garden, is it worth it?

What are your thoughts on the deep mulch Ruth Stout gardening technique on a large market garden scale?  Do you think it is too resource intensive to be of much benefit in this application or would you recommend it?  Has anyone tried the deep mulch on the 1 acre plus scale with success, and are the continual inputs offset with less labor?

here's someone doing it in the Ithaca area of New York state. This video from a year ago hasn't been updated since but it might give you some ideas;



Geoff Lawton's video about permaculture soils has a segment where he demonstrates a quickly formed Ruth Stout-esque garden. It's tucked away somewhere in there.
http://permaculturenews.org/2015/05/03/permaculture-soils-geoff-lawton/

I don't have an answer or opinion but our community garden is modeling our garden this year from Ruth Stout's recommendations.  We are just now covering the garden with old hay.  The garden has been in existence for two years and this third year has presented the challenge of limited participation so we chose this method to curtail the tilling, weeding,etc as much as possible.

@Pat Yount

any tips on how to foster discussion about projects in community gardens? Seems like anytime I suggest something I'm met with a "good idea" and a blank stare.

Kamaar, I've found that a lot of people will get on board if you just start doing something.  For instance at your community garden if you wanted to start implementing a Ruth Stout style garden first convert your plot to that style and get one other person to do the same(that way it's not just your crazy idea), once you have that first follower and an example to point to it becomes MUCH easier to have a productive conversation about larger scale projects.....

I've just been thinking I want to move to this method too.  I've not been happy with the wood chips approach since smaller seeds just don't work as well but grass invaded anyway.  gotta find a way to transport hay though to my city lot.

michelle salois wrote:I've just been thinking I want to move to this method too.  I've not been happy with the wood chips approach since smaller seeds just don't work as well but grass invaded anyway.  gotta find a way to transport hay though to my city lot.

You might be able to get a farmer to deliver you hay and straw in small bales if you live near a hay producing area.  I've had really good luck getting hay and straw delivered through Craigslist, you'll pay a little more for the convenience of having it delivered and you'll pay a little more for the small bales than you would for big squares or round bales, but you pay less for the tractor, pick up, and trailer for moving it yourself....

This makes me think of the Chicken Tractor book. Didn't he use those to build up beds and then just move them along down the line then over to the next row and so on? Then when the manure had composted enough he planted in them.

Before using hay/straw for mulch, I suggest you read this article written by David the Good:

http://thegrownetwork.com/hidden-dangers-straw-bale-gardening/

michelle salois wrote:I've just been thinking I want to move to this method too.  I've not been happy with the wood chips approach since smaller seeds just don't work as well but grass invaded anyway.  gotta find a way to transport hay though to my city lot.

Michelle, I wouldn't give up yet.  If grass is invading (and that happens to me too), your wood chips aren't deep enough.  When planting small seeds, actually any seeds, you never plant in the wood chips, you move them aside and plant in the soil underneath.  You will have the same issues if you try to plant seeds in the straw or hay.  You either move it aside and plant in the soil, or make a "hole", fill it with soil, and plant in that.  I sometimes do the same in woodchips.  Pull the chips aside to make a row, fill it with compost, and plant in the row.  I do that in areas that the chips haven't broken down enough underneath to plant in them, because my soil is very heavy clay.  

In response to the initial inquiry about anyone doing deep mulch on a larger scale, I watched a video of a couple that covered a two acre property with wood chips.  It wasn't level to begin with, so in some places they put the chips several feet deep to level it.  They brought in more than 500 dump truck loads of chips and are having fantastic results.

I really like what Jim Kovaleski is doing here in Maine on his 1/2 acre super productive market garden. Here is his synopsis of the technique he wrote for his talk at the annual MOFGA Commonground fair:
"I'll share how I am using a scythe to mow and gather fertility from a meadow polyculture as fodder for the Micro herd in the soil.concentrating The fodder from 5 acres of meadows averaging 3 cuts a year using all the plant material, essentially fresh cut hay, as a feeding mulch for the 1/2 acre of market garden beds at Lamb Cove Farm.I will also talk about my observation that the meadows having all the plant material removed for 7 years are surprisingly much richer than when I started. "  ---Repeat: He scythes 5 ac of meadow 3 times a season!!!--- that plus market gardening year round (he market gardens in the winter in flordia) is the ultimate fitness plan! He is a super fit older gentleman!
I have been to his talk several times and his technique consists of starting with 3' beds spaced 30' apart roughly on contour - 30' is 3 passes with his scythe - he just windrows the cut meadow into roughly 3' wide, 2'+ tall windrows and he utilizes the soil block system from 1.5" to 6" with high quality compost soil mix for most of what he grows. He then just plugs the 6" block transplants into the windrow. He plants root veggies at the edges at the edges of these now permanent beds to till the edges. He cuts and mulches the beds 3 times per season. That's it - no water -  no fertilizer - just roughly 3-5 acres of meadow condensed onto a intensively planted 1/2-1 acre of market garden beds. His veggies are pristine and gorgeous!. He talks about the advantage of using a custom site specific nature created polyculture as the ideal fertilizer suited perfectly to that site. He argues his meadow is grazed completely by his scythe, not selectively by grazing animals, and he mimics rotational grazing with how he cuts his meadow so he is seeing regenerative results similar to proper rotational grazing.

Tyler, very interesting.  Thanks for posting it.

Yes, it is worth it to have a Ruth Stout garden. I actually had to look this up to see what it was. I am on pure sand. It is reclaimed land, so I have been only adding hay and woodchips every year to my garden for the last 3 years. Sadly the first 2 years my husband insisted on tilling. Now he finally sees the benefits of a no till garden with hay mulch. The summers get really hot. We can reach temperatures of 100F. Weeks of 80-90F is not uncommon. Hay also helps keep the sand "soil" from drying out.

My problem was since my base is sand the water kept running off. So last fall I started building garden beds. I dug 1.5 feet below the boards, put in rotting wood, waste from last years crop, hay, my sandy "soil" a bunch of nutrients and mycrobz then more hay and topped with woodchips. Each fall I will be topping with more hay and then wood chips. I should get an amazing garden if not this year next year for sure as everything breaks down. Hay, as it breaks down has so many wonderful nutrients the plants can use. Add to that some Mycrobz and compost and you have a powerhouse garden. My new beds are 4 ft x 30 ft. I built 4 last fall and hope to build another 6 this year. I put 2 bales of hay in each bed. Bales are 80 pounds each. I will be adding 2 bales to each bed every year until I get some nice soil. Then add one bale each year maybe more.

Pictures are some produce from my 2016 garden. (only let me post 3 photos. Do not know how to post more)I built up walls with sand and topped it with hay and woodchips. You will see I did not use the 8 inches recommended. I used about 2-3 inches of hay with no manure yet look how well everything grew.
Is it worth it to use hay? You tell me. I will not use anything else but hay. As for cost, hay out here from a good source is like 8 bucks a bale for an 80 lb. bale.

I am also hoping to level about 1/2 acre of land scatter hay all over it about 3-4 inches thick and start growing green manure crops in it to build up a base to grow corn for a small market garden one day. Hay is my only logical choice and it has proven to do very well for me.

I also started an orchard 4 years ago.  I planted 1-2 year old fruit trees. The orchard is all fine and course gravel, no sand or soil of any kind. I have been building up around the trees with a thick layer of hay for the first couple years and now hay and compost. 2015 gave me my first crop of pears. 2016 gave me my first crop of peaches and cherries. At this rate I can easily have excess fruit for sale in another year or 2. Here are 3 more follow up photos at the end of the season of 2016.

I just typed about a thousand words with pictures and everything only to have this stupid system erase everything.

I'm outta here!

I would say that it depends on your season length. For us in zone 8b, we can grow food almost year round. That means we are turning over crops every 2-3 months, which means frequent replanting. It's not worth the effort of having to rake away mulch every time we replant. You can't use a walk-behind seeder in thick mulch, so you have to remove it along the row every time you wanted to seed a crop -- or just plant by hand which is way too slow for us. Also, there's no way for us to hill crops such as potatoes or corn if there's a thick mulch layer on top. Potatoes are considerably more productive if they are hilled by adding soil around the plant as it grows. Also corn has thicker, healthier stalks if it is hilled when plants get about 1-2' tall.

If your growing season is short and you only have one crop per year in a given area, I could see where it could be effective because weeding time and costs could be reduced. We do mulch perennials such as asparagus, blueberries and blackberries and it is very effective because those plants are in the same location every year. But for annual vegetables that move with crop rotations, it's not feasible.

For us it's much easier to use a Wheel Hoe to provide frequent, shallow cultivation for weed control. We can Wheel Hoe our gardens once a week and keep weeds well under control. Using drip irrigation also reduces any weed pressure between rows.