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Ruth Stout was an evangelist for the easy way to garden. In the articles she wrote for Organic Gardening from 1953 to 1971, she explained how her year-round mulch system eliminated nearly all the chores that burden gardeners—weeding, feeding, watering, even digging. Most of her writing focused on growing food, but as you'll see in this excerpt from a collection of her articles —The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book— her principles and blunt commonsense applied as well to what are often considered the most demanding plants in the garden, roses.
I suppose it is accurate to say that roses are in a class by themselves in the flower kingdom, although it is certainly true that they are not everybody's favorite. Most of us like them, though; many of us love them, and it seems almost everyone who grows flowers would like to have a rosebush or two.
Then why not? Well, in the past year visitors to our garden almost universally said this about roses: "I love them, but they are so much work and even after I kill myself for them they aren't very satisfactory." Just the other day a visitor said that to me and I pinned her down:
"What makes them so much work? What do you feel you are required to do?"
"The weeding is a never-ending job, but spraying is the worst."
"What is it you spray for?"
"Black leaf spot."
"Does that get rid of it?"
"No, that's the trouble. I still have it."
I had asked dozens of rose growers, some of them excellent gardeners, this question and had always received that answer.
"Then why do you spray?" I asked her.
She looked a little amazed.
"All the books tell you to."
"Yes—but if it doesn't help?"
I told her I never sprayed my roses and that I had some black leaf spot, but no more than any roses I had ever seen which were conscientiously sprayed. I had given up spraying from discouragement and distaste for the job and had continued the practice of no spraying from just every day common sense. If the spraying didn't do what it was supposed to do, what was the purpose of my antics?
