No till Ruth Stout garden

The soil has finally dried up enough to be able to be worked! Perfect timing as we are about to leave for Ireland & Scotland soon. While I would have loved to be able to tackle the entire quarter acre garden this year, I didn't want to overwhelm myself more than I have already so José and I are only going to work on one garden row about 2000 square feet. Which still much more than our 10 x 10 plot back in NJ. But if anyone is looking for garden space in exchange for weekly veggies, please let me know!

For the past few years the garden rows have been covered in black plastic. Wanting to transition to more natural soil building methods, we decided to do half the row using Ruth Stout's method of simply mulching with a ton of hay.

So all we did was remove the plastic, spread some compost, use a broadfork to make 3 rows, cover the rows with hay, and plant our seeds. Simple but exhausting. Oh and the black flies were vicious! I have about 20 bites that are swollen right now. So long sleeves and pants are a must no matter how hot it is outside.

Row 1 was potatoes, row 2, beets and carrots, and row 3, onions, beans, and cowpeas. We also planted clover in the pathways to walk on. We probably should have started the bed prep in the fall but we'll see how it goes.

On the other half of the row, we kept the plastic and planted winter and summer squash, watermelon and cucumber. We also buried a few cups in the ground and filled them with cheap beer to trap the many snails that are in the garden. I'm looking forward to see how effective this way of gardening actually is!