Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent

Rating:
Summary: A clever, entertaining practical gardening book.
Review: One of my favorite books on gardening. Humorous and folksy. Her methods work extremely well. Save yourself lots of sweat in the garden. Read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not literature but nice and useful
Review: Ruth is pretty much a one-note song (mulch, Mulch, MULCH) but it's nice to know that I'm not alone in using tons of hay to mulch my gardens. This isn't literature and Ruth is, at times, a bit too folksy but given that my method of gardening isn't much different, I would probably write a lot like her. It turns out I've been a Ruth devotee for a while without even knowing it.

If you are not using mulch in your garden/landscape and are tired of weeding and looking at hard, baked dirt, you owe it to yourself to give Ruth a shot. Though written in 1960, the book is still relevant and useful (except the parts about parsnips and turnips :-).

Rating:
Summary: For so much knowledge, not much information.
Review: Ruth Stout knows what she is doing but I sensed a tone of irritation in her book with people who need information on what to do. Most of the book is relating her experiences without any real information. She talks about a fence her brother built to keep out raccoons but yet no details about what this fence was or how it was constructed. This isn't a book for beginning gardeners. I was dissapointed with the books lack of real information. If you want information on how to garden this is not the book to read. If you want to read about a gardeners experiences and how irritated she gets with beginners this is the book you want.

Rating:
Summary: For so much knowledge, not much information.
Review: Ruth Stout knows what she is doing but I sensed a tone of irritation in her book with people who need information on what to do. Most of the book is relating her experiences without any real information. She talks about a fence her brother built to keep out raccoons but yet no details about what this fence was or how it was constructed. This isn't a book for beginning gardeners. I was dissapointed with the books lack of real information. If you want information on how to garden this is not the book to read. If you want to read about a gardeners experiences and how irritated she gets with beginners this is the book you want.