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!"

This, 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 they keep a copy of my garden book in their waiting rooms. Or try to; the dentist has had twenty-three copies stolen, the doctor, sixteen."

This is the book that began it all...from her choice of Poverty Hollow, to being "gifted" topsoil from the road construction, to a complete description of hints, successes, failures, and everything that goes into having a Green Thumb without an Aching Back!