Lazy Gardening Witch
(I originally wrote this over on Medium.)
I have been gardening for over 15 years. I’m also super fucking lazy.
Those things seem at odds, right? Gardening is a lot of work. Lazy people should probably avoid it. But I’ve never let my personal shortcomings get in the way of illogical ambition, so I’ve made accommodations. Here’s what I’ve learned (mostly the hard way) that has helped me.
Raised beds. I put in mostly raised beds (waist height) for my vegetables. This started because I have a bad back, not necessarily because I’m lazy, but not having to bend over or crouch down or crawl around on my hands & knees has definitely made tending to those veggies a lot less work. Also, I got my brother to build the beds because, well. Lazy.
Automate your watering. Those raised beds are self-watering, which means we lined them with poly, put in a base of permeable rock, and a 4” PVC pipe down to that layer. It kind of looks like this. I can just fill it up every couple of days or so, and my plants get consistent water with minimal effort on my part. (Tomatoes and carrots LOVE this.) For other areas in the garden, I run soaker hoses early in the spring and then put them on a timer. So much less work. And water waste.
Don’t rake your leaves in the fall. Do you know what happens to leaves over the winter? They compost and turn into dirt (eventually). They insulate your more-sensitive plants, so they can overwinter and come back in the spring. (Because perennials are also a boon for lazy gardeners.) Unraked leaves also serve as a home for hibernating beneficial insects, which means…
Don’t rake your leaves in the spring, either. At least not right away. Doing a spring cleanup too early means you’re rousting those ladybugs and leafcutter bees out of their beds and they might not make it. So hold off on that, and maybe if you’re lucky the spring winds will blow stuff into your neighbours’ yards.
Mulch. I don’t know why it took me so many years to embrace this concept, but mulching around your plants is the bomb for preventing weeds. Mulch everything! Heavily! Like, 4 inches of straw or grass clippings or…dare I say it…unraked leaves. This will make your life SO much easier in July when you’d rather be drinking a margarita in the shade.
I have other, more esoteric, lazy hacks to gardening. For instance, you can justify a surprising number of weeds by embracing their medicinal or magickal benefits. But that’s a whole other series of posts.
One last thought on the lazy person’s approach to gardening: if you’re new to it, start small. You can grow a lot of vegetables in a container or two, and there’s nothing more discouraging for us unambitious folks than a field full of weeds. I’ve spent the better part of a decade reclaiming garden space because I initially thought I could manage a 600 sq ft garden.
I didn’t know myself very well back then.
