Gardening Without Work

Garden expert and lovable eccentric Ruth Stout once said: "At the age of 87 I grow vegetables for two people the year-round, doing all the work myself and freezing the surplus. I tend several flower beds, write a column every week, answer an awful lot of mail, do the housework and cooking; and never do any of these things after 11 o'clock in the morning!" Her first book about her no-work gardening system, "How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back," was the kind of book people can't bear to return. She reports, "A dentist in Pennsylvania and a doctor in Oregon have both written me that…