I Think It Was The Rain

[big rockpile]

After a long drought we have been getting rain about every other day.

This season I started using the Ruth Stout Method. My Potatoes are doing nothing. No blooms and no Potatoes.

With Ruth Stout great for holding water but like I say it has rained often. I think it has distroyed my Potato Crop.

I’m thinking this just isn’t going to work.

big rockpile

 

[Meadowlark]

I won't say I told you so...but...

 

[big rockpile]

Ah kick a guy while he is down. LOL

Just replant something and go on.

big rockpile

 

[trents]

The Ruth Stout method may also not be a good idea for sweet corn. Because they are tall plants, they can be uprooted under windy conditions unless they are rooted in soil that has firmness to it. I lost part of my corn crop one year because I planted in raised beds that I had filled with loose top soil.

 

[Meadowlark]

The Ruth Stout method may also not be a good idea for sweet corn.

This is true ^^^^^^. Even with fully developed anchor roots some storms can bend them over.

 

[trents]

Keep in mind that Ruth Stout developed her method because of what she observed about asparagus in her Kansas farm family home garden. The asparagus patch did well year after year without tillage. But of course, tilling would virtually destroy the asparagus crop. It is a perennial plant that springs from roots that over-winter in the soil from year to year. Strawberries would be another example. I think the main lesson from all of this is that the Ruth Stout method is valid for a lot of gardening applications but not all. One size doesn't fit all.

 

[Meadowlark]

I grow asparagus in an HK container (as well as other crops that benefit from it). I certainly don't call it the Ruth Stout method or the Charles Dowding method or any other method. Rather, I call it common sense gardening.

One of the problems I have with these methods which seem to take on some kind of underserved magic, is that gardeners often follow the method rather than follow their own common sense. They treat the method as the objective rather than the veggies to be grown.

For example, No till...ok that means I can't grow potatoes because I can't disturb the soil. That is completely laughable to me. No till...ok that means I can't apply green manure, I can't use chop and drop, and I must limit my compost to just a couple of inches a year. Laughable. Weeds...can't dig them or disturb the soil so let them grow and reseed at the expense of your crop.

The methods are not an end to themselves and should never be allowed to replace good common sense gardening applications, in my view.