Avoid this MISTAKE when using Hay as Mulch | Ruth Stout Method 

Summed up: Add a thick enough layer of hay so the weeds witll not come through (or fewer). Seeds from the hay can germinate, but it is more likely that it is is shoots from the underground. When setting up a new garden (transforming lawn etc into a garden) you are applying cardboard anyway to smother the plants in the underground. If weeds come up nearby small seedlings (so you cannot just add more hay) you need to shove the mulch aside, give a few stripes of carton around the base of the seedling directly on the soil see 4:50. Then shove the covering hay back in place add some more hay and cautiously step on it to compress it in height. All leaves must be above the hay layer so the young plant will not be smothered. 8:15 And the plants at the fence recovered 5 days after covering them with (more) hay. they got greener so they can do (more) photosynthesis now.Likely the cooler ground temperatures help them.

Soooo glad to find a Ruth Stout Texas gardner! I'm in central Texas. ❤️🇨🇱🇺🇸✝️🙏

I found that hay layer was a good place for mice to hide and they chewed most of the potatoes.

Sure is a good video. That's a good looking garden. Your plants do look good. Have a great day

I have such difficulty with weeds so I’ll be making hay mulching adjustments Thanks

This is very helpful ❤we appreciate it Will be using soon the large hay source we have net next to our garden.

Great tips!

I really enjoy your stuff. I have a garden (very small) near Lake Jackson and a much bigger one in NW Louisiana. Your giving me a lot of good advice.

Cool info, thanks.

Yay! So glad I found your channel, new subscriber here. I just got finished watching the documentary about Ruth Stout and I'm so curious if anyone's tried gardening her way and to learn more about it! I can't wait to binge watch your videos! Thanks! 🤗

Oh heck yeah - thanks so much!! Subscriber from NW Fl.

Love the shirt! Great video

Love that shirt girl!!

Love your T shirt!!

I have that tee. Thanks for this video.

Thank you for this! I post Ruth Stout updates on my chan too and like to stress that it isn't a "set it and forget it" method but that overall it's so much less work.

I absolutely love your shirt

Wondering if pests, particularly European fire ants will make nests under the hay. Loved the video - thanks for sharing!

I used hay to cover hill rows this week, to protect from this heat and came across this method ,, I'm totally sold,,

You can dry grass clippings before the seeds come. Then you can use it safely in your gardens. Scyth cut grsss even better. You get a free upper body workout as well

I used cardboard one year and found the pieces were too big. They acted more like roof shingles diverting water away from the plant. Krystal's little pieces were perfect. If you need to cover a large area, use lots of little pieces. Big pieces work for walkways, of course.

Hi, thanks for the videos, I really want to try this method in my Hill Country garden. Is coastal hay ok to use? Is tgere any difference between using hay and straw? Thanks!!

My face 😱 after I used hay as mulch 🙈 😅 I should’ve watched the video first.

"Not today devil" - Nice t-shirt😂

Hi Krystal! I am so enjoying your videos. I'm curious to the type of hay you use? This year I'm mulching with cedar mulch hoping to help keep plant munching insects away. Have you ever tried it? BTW, I grow in raised beds if that makes any difference.

The school near us has a cardboard recycling dumpster. Sunday I went and collected cardboard to improve the area around my pumpkins because they were outgrowing their area. I still haven't found a source for untainted hay. Love your tips.

I've used hay and it is a good mulch but I had seeds sprouting in my garden so I started using pine straw and worked much better for me also by end of gardening (fall ) it seemed to have rotted quicker and turned into a rich dark soil sooner than hay also during the straw gathering there were many night crawlers (worms) to be harvested with the straw to be added to the garden a double bonus I would say

i actually have hay sprouting. but it doesnt have big roots. when i pull it the seed is there

Hi Krystal, good idea, I will use some cardboard underneath the hay too. I have one question: when laying cardboard around the plant, you didn't leave any room from the plant for water/rain to get inside, is it because the cardboard pieces used are small and narrow, water/rain get in through the hay can reach the plant easily? Thanks

I know that oats will sprout from horse manure, if the horse cant fully chew up the grain.

In Florida it works down 1 1/2 inches a month. Not only do I have to put down hay but newspaper, cardboard and anything else I can find. Once I tried those round things and they were full of bugs.

Just found your channel looking for what people are calling the Ruth Stout method. I am in west Texas so probably at least 5 hours away from your lush green living lol. However, some promoting this call it straw which is to me different than hay. Is straw and hay used interchangeably depending on which part of the country the host is from?

Hello again, Krystal : ) Thank you for helping me last week with my chiggar problem. I'm planning to get out in the garden tomorrow to "add more hay!" and will try the essential oil repellent you suggested. I have another question for you. We are in north central Texas and as I said last week, this is my first year gardening in Texas. I can't tell from your picture, but do you have "black gumbo" soil like we do? I'm not sure if that's what it is called everywhere, but that's what the locals here call it. It's pretty rich looking when it's wet or damp, but with even one hot day, the surface completely dries out and large, wide cracks form. When I dig down beneath that surface layer, I hit limestone. I'm pretty sure my plants' roots must be hitting that limestone and then they stop growing and wilt. Do you have any suggestions for me? Thanks!

I've used straw for my first 2 years with a weed free garden. Not this spring!! I bought straw again , put it down and within 5 days my gardens looked as though I planted 500 pounds of grass seed!!!! I believe its wheat straw. The wheat ends were sprouting by the millions!! I got so frustrated I ripped it all out! Now I don't know what to use.

if your bale sits and gets rained on, it will most likely start growing. Mine always do. the starts are easy to pull out as you sprinkle the straw on bed.

Hi 😃 I think I'm just down the road from you. can I go look at your garden and get some ideas?

I normally add the straw before I transplant or sow seeds into my raised beds. When sowing seeds, should I wait for the seedlings to get up to a certain height? Or should I put straw down and just clear open a small area for each seed I'm sowing?

I love that T-shirt!! Do u sell them if not plz send me a link or maybe u can sell them? Let me know!!

Hay is scarce and expensive in Vermont where we had a drought last summer. Mulch hay is $5 per bale, IF you can find it. Canada had a drought too, and that is our go-to place when hay harvest is sparse her in Vermont.

Could you use straw? No seeds

Does the hay and mulching in general provide pest cover? I’ve seen different opinions, on mulching or not.

Please help, I need advice. I have covered the whole garden with hay, the soil is great, I don't have to water it but the snails eat everything!!! It's unbelievable. All my peppers for this season are gone. But I can't scatter blue seeds because they all disappear in the hay and the snails still come. They are now going to my greenhouse too, it all looks so sad. 😢😢😢😢😢😢

Hello, I am in south Texas. I have started using hay for my garden also but am scared of snakes hiding under the hay. Did you find snake under your hay mulch? What do you do to deter snakes from hiding under the hay?

Nice idea but I’m in south Dallas I’m afraid the hay will catch on fire in the summer

Do you have snakes under the hay?

What’s the difference between using hey vs straw? Thank you 🙏

What you are calling yucky under that hay at 2:23 I call wonderful! Lol

I use straw. It works.

Is it better to use straw, rather than hay?

Is there any veggie plant that I should not put hay around?

People planting "Brexit gardens" in the UK really need to see this and other videos about Ruth Stout.

Love the shirt great video also

Hay and straw are two different things. Hey is for FEED it contains the seed and grasses. Straw is used for bedding and contains none of that .

Do you use hay or straw?

Can you substitute straw for hay?

The hay my also contain Grazon or Picloram!!! Look it up!

I thought the chickens was a part of the beat, they really add something to it.

Why hay and not straw?

Can I use hay around my rhubarb?

Hay is the best only thing worry about weed pesticides on the hay

Are you using hay or straw? Hay has a lot of seeds in it

Unfortunately, the hay now has Grazon poisoning if you can’t find it organic. Rye might be better.

HAY ya'll :D

The HAY has lots of carbon , that's why your eggplant is weak. To balance the carbon , you need nitrate . Add nitrate , I think your garden will boom and bloom .

When they say hay, don’t they really mean straw?

I used costal bermuda grass hay - sheet composted it, in my garden several years ago, and it sprouted costal bermuda grass, which, once established, is impossible to eradicate, shy of using Roundup, which I won't do, so I abandoned that site. It is much safer to use OLD, really old, rotten hay rolls of Bahia grass hay that has a low likelihood of containing seed heads in it, plus, you can pull Bahia grass out fairly easy, compared to costal bermuda grass. Moral of the story, don't ever used costal hay in your garden. P.s. I didn't have costal hay, previously in my garden, so it had to have come from the hay I put down in it; what a mistake!! I live in north central Florida. Here, costal bermuda hay is considered the best "horse quality" hay, and bahia is lower quality and is considered, "cow hay".

👍👍👍🇮🇳

The hay will sprout seedlings isnt really true. Everywhere we feed our cows and goats a bale of hay that spot will not have any grass grow there till we take a tractor over and remove it, some will even burn the leftovers piles. We try to unroll the bale which seems to help but not a big difference. As far as chemical free that would be very difficult to find. The chemicals remain in the soil for years so your "first cut" is still laced with chemicals from the last several seasons. Even your organic fields have it if anybody nearby use them .

Use straw.

Hay has seeds.. good straw has no seeds. Hay is not straw.

Yahshua - you know Him as Jesus - was born to a virgin, turned water to wine, taught, healed the sick, raised the dead, casted out demons, walked on water, and calmed the storm, among many other things. He was killed on the cross as payment for the sins of all mankind, three days later He rose from the dead. Forty days later He ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father. He is returning very soon, but before He does, Satan, the devil, is coming to pretend to be Jesus/God. Satan is an angel, and he will have certain supernatural powers with which to try to fool everyone. He will, for example, be able to make fire come down from heaven in the sight of men. He will only be on earth a short time before the real King of Kings, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, returns. When the real Jesus comes we will all be transformed into our spiritual bodies at the same moment. Jesus came in the flesh to offer forgiveness of sins and eternal life to anyone who believes and calls on His precious name! Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her. -- Matthew 26:6-13

Dont use hay use straw.hay will always sprout.straw is what your supposed to use

Your manmade devil 😈 put those weeds there ! .... lol

Your eggplants look very unhealthy , have aged, although they are young . Something went wrong during their early growth stages (frost , high heat, or lack of water). The soil looks healthy though .

Lol hay ? You mean. Straw . Hay is what animals eat and filled full of seeds you don’t use this in the garden, straw is a byproduct from grain Spoken like a city kid

I lasted 45 seconds..... Very annoying.

Satan RULES. jesus loose

Hey I love Satan , hes my "god" of choice .

𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨.