Ruth Stout The Mulch Queen

First off, today is beautiful!  The sun is out, there is a nice breeze and\ the temps are in the 70's.  Gorgeous.  I even have sun tea outside with 2 black and 1 green tea bags steeping. 

I finished my book, How to have a Green thumb Without an Aching Back, one of 3 books I own by Ruth Stout.  Her concept is to never till, just keep on piling on the compost and mulch.  When you want to plant, you just pull away the mulch and plant the seed.  Seems simple enough. 

I had picked up 4 bags of leaves from a neighbor yesterday and I spread them around the garden today, especially where there were weeds, then walked down 2 houses and picked up 2 more bags and used those, too.  It might be too late to really do any good right now, because I'll be planting soon, but it will eventually break down and help make the soil rich.  We have been putting grass clippings out there for a few years, too.  I have 2 large bins of compost from kitchen scraps I have been layering with rabbit droppings and bedding that should be ready at about the time the asparagus want to peek through the soil as well.

The fruit trees were very happy to be uncovered today, I could tell.  The weather forecast for the next 10 days is very nice with most days around 70 and the evenings around 50.  Hopefully the trees made it and won't die off on me from the 20 degree temps they had to endure last week.

I think my next book to read will be fiction by Beverly Lewis.  I had 3 of her books that won't fit on my inspirational book case and they are pretty quick reads.  Amish stories which I LOVE.  See a trend here?  Self-sufficiency, gardening, Amish, etc.  I am wanting to read 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction (gardening, health, animal training, etc.) at a time to keep me learning and enjoying reading. I could easily plow through one fiction book after another, but there is so much I want to know!

I did learn a lot of interesting facts about gardenias today while I was finishing up Ruth Stout's book.  She lived in Connecticut and needed to pot her gardenias, but I don't really need to do that here in the south.  I might try them potted because what would be prettier than 2 pots of gardenias on either side of my front door?  Oh, the thought makes me smile.

Pam