2021 Facsimile of the 1955 Edition. "Out of the great mass of gardening books here is one that really delights while it instructs.... Most important of all, it is a labour-saving book, explaining how much of the back-ache of gardening, particularly hand-weeding, can be eliminated by an intelligent policy of mulching, and the use of natural rather than artificial methods of cultivation." The Book Exchange [England] The author has, over the course of a quarter century of gardening, worked out a method of using mulches. This has cut down her expenditure of hard work and has given her excellent fruit, vegetables and flowers...a new method of mulch gardening.

Ruth Stout was a beloved advocate of organic gardening and simple living. Her books and magazine articles popularized her simple living to millions.

Ruth was born in Kansas. Her mother was a Quaker with a rate knack for coping with her nine children. One of Ruth's brothers, Rex Stout, became the creator of the well-known Nero Wolfe mysteries, and Ruth herself began selling stories locally at an early age.

As a teenager, Ruth accompanied prohibitionist Carrie Nation on a saloon-smashing excursion (saloons were illegal in Kansas City at the time). In 1923 Ruth accompanied fellow Quakers to Russia to assist in famine relief.

Ruth moved to New York City, and before her marriage to Fred Rossiter she worked at a variety of jobs-nursemaid, telephone operator, bookkeeper, secretary, office manager, owner of a Greenwich Village tearoom. After her marriage, she and her husband moved to an old farm, Poverty Hollow, in West Redding, Connecticut.

Ruth's career since moving to the country was that of cook, housekeeper, gardener, lecturer, and, of course, writer. Ruth wrote several books and innumerable newspaper and magazine columns. She died in 1980 at the age of 96.