gardening activities you don't need to do

Home Garden activities you don't need to do

I don't know about you, but every year in May, I sit down to plan my summer. I collect all the important dates and put everything on the calendar - family reunions, summer camps for the kids, a beach vacation, and a brewery festival in August. Before I know it, my calendar is full.

1. Poor planning

Time-saving gardening begins even before the first seed is planted. When planning your garden each year, do you consider what your family eats the most? Have you considered how much you rely on fresh herbs to cook? How about long-growing crops; Where do you put them?

Think about your garden layout in relation to how you live.

If you grow fresh herbs for cooking, planting them in the vegetable patch will cost more. Plant frequently used herbs in the doorway near the kitchen. You can easily plant most herbs in containers. Easy access means less time spent running back and forth to the garden.

If you enjoy certain vegetables that require a longer growing season, plant those vegetables further from home. Place the vegetables you pick most often near your home. If you know your family will be eating roasted zucchini sandwiches for lunch every day, consider growing zucchini in a container on your patio. The idea is to reduce your trips to the garden and keep food closer to the table.

Tomato Home Garden Tips 👇

Home Garden tomato 1	Home Garden tomato 2	Home Garden tomato 3
Drying the Tomato vine	Epsom Salt Tomato	Before Planting Tomato
Support Tomatoes	Reason Tomato Split	Tomato Better Support
When Watering Tomato	Destructive tomato pest	Tomato Seedling

2. Plowing and Digging

For years, tilling the garden was an afternoon activity. After letting the rototiller sit in the shed all year it only takes an hour or two to run it. And then there's the actual plowing. You have to make several passes at a snail's pace to get down there and turn the soil. You know you have to do it again at the end of the season.

Avoid it completely.

There's no reason to dig up your yard or existing garden every year. Doing so leads to more work (weeds) and fewer crops each season. When we dig into the ground, we destroy an important microorganism beneath our feet. The natural fungi and bacteria that grow underground are essential for healthy plants.

These microbes affect weed growth, drought resistance, and absorption of nutrients by your plants. It can take years for a healthy soil microbe to grow. If you're ripping it off every year, you're doing yourself more work.

3. Planting year

If you love flowers but want more time to enjoy them than grow them, it's time to consider perennials. Annuals grow quickly but must be reseeded each year. That means starting them indoors yourself or buying transplants from a nursery. Once they bloom, annuals usually need to keep them in bloom. Deadheading can become a tedious task if you have substantial flower beds. Perennials are a great time saver for beautifying your landscape. Especially if you choose native species. Perennials come back every year and fill flower beds without reseeding. If you choose native species, you're choosing plants that will grow and thrive where you live, and they'll still be handy.

Home Garden Post 👇

 The 10 Best Fragrant Indoor Plants

Indoor and outdoor plants with heart-shaped leaves

Before Moving your Indoor Plants Outside

4. Choosing fussy plants

Every winter, when the gardening catalogs hit my mailbox, my eyelids glaze over and I order all the beautiful vegetables. Look! Purple brussels sprouts, oh, I want that cute pink eggplant, aren't those micro tomatoes cool? Do I bother reading customer reviews to gauge taste etc.? Am I looking at the germination rate of the seeds? Or does that particular type of red carrot do well in my growing zone or not?

Nope

We all do. How to find resistant plants? Do you have squash bugs every year but still buy the same type of squash? Do you love the idea of ​​heirloom tomatoes but are frustrated by the catface and cracked fruit they produce?

5. Weeding

Wait, Tracy, don't you want to weed your garden?

Well, yes, you do, but you don't have to. If there's one thing you can do to reduce wasted time in the garden, it's mulch. A good layer of mulch, even along paths, goes a long way to suppressing weeds. And practice good weeding practices. I have a rule - anyone who goes into the garden must pull ten weeds while there. This rule applies to me, my sweetie, kids and even visiting dignitaries. Grab some weed on the way out.

 Indoor plants Ideas 👇

6. Irrigation

I know some people find watering their garden a peaceful activity, and on a lazy Sunday morning, I enjoy it too. But most of the time, it is a hassle.

Waterlogging is another reason to mulch your garden early in the season. A good layer of mulch not only suppresses weeds but also holds precious moisture in the soil. While you're at it, it's also a good idea to use a quality mycorrhizae mix if you want to water less. Mycorrhizae increase the surface area of ​​roots, allowing them to penetrate deeper into the soil and take up more water. Using mycorrhizae ensures drought-tolerant plants.

When you water, make sure you water deeply and saturate the soil. A good soaking makes the roots deeper and more drought tolerant.

7. Digging your potatoes

If you grow potatoes, you know how much work they can be – digging trenches to put the seed potatoes in, lifting them up once the sprouts have grown a bit, and lifting them up again. Then, at the end of the season, dig them up while being careful not to puncture them.

I have two time-saving ways to grow potatoes that yield better yields than growing potatoes in dirt hills. First, you need to grow your potatoes in the ground using a straw. Instead of digging up the potatoes, you place them on top of the soil and cover them with straw, adding more straw as the plants grow. To harvest your potatoes, peel off the straw. No digging, no shoveling potatoes.

Home Garden Basics 👇

8. Mowing

How many hours do you mow the lawn each summer?

This may be the year to consider rewilding a portion of your property. There are many benefits to giving some of your lawn to nature. You'll increase the habitat for many animals and insects, including pollinators. One of the big advantages is less time spent cutting. You can choose to turn your lawn into a creeping thyme lawn, which requires little to no mowing. At the very least, you can swear off mowing every May for a no-mow May.