by Erin Hynes
You wouldn’t grow flowers or vegetables if you didn’t enjoy gardening, but even gardeners have to find time for other things, like going to work and sleeping. Try these eight suggestions for saving time on garden work.
Be informal. Save time from the very start by adopting an informal garden style in which flowers can sprawl and shrubs have room to reach their full height. Leave the straight rows and precisely clipped shrubs to the volunteers at the botanical garden.
Nurture the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy plants, and healthy plants need less care. Keep your soil healthy by spreading organic matter, such as grass clippings and compost, on the soil surface or lightly dig it into the ground. Organic matter improves all soil types. It also feeds earthworms and soil-dwelling microorganisms that make soil nutrients available to plants.
You can preserve the structure of soil grains by minimizing the amount of tilling you do. Overworking the soil can pulverize it, making it more like cement. Wait until the soil is almost dry before digging or tilling; the soil is ready when you can form a loose ball of dirt in your hand, and the ball breaks apart when you drop it.
Choose disease-resistant varieties. Some varieties of vegetables and flowers are better at fighting off common diseases. Check vegetable plant labels and seed packets for a string of letters, such a VFN (which stands for verticillium, fusarium and nematodes) that indicates which disease the plant resists. Labels on perennials don’t mention disease resistance, so research before buying disease-prone species, such as roses and garden phlox.
Be wary of invasives. Some annuals, perennials and garden shrubs politely stay where you put them, getting a little wider each year. Others are more aggressive, tossing their seeds hither and yon, or sending underground shoots into the far corners of the garden. Aggressive plants are useful for filling in bare slopes and other needy areas, but in a more contained garden they add to your weeding time. One good clue that a plant is invasive — your neighbors keep offering to give you a big chunk of it.
Avoid deadheads. Deadheading is the time-consuming practice of removing flowers after they turn brown. Deadheading is about more than looks — it encourages plants to produce more flowers. It also prevents seeds from scattering where you don’t want them.
Look for plants that keep flowering without deadheading or that are self-cleaning, which means they do their own deadheading. A few options are alyssum, lobelia, verbena, moss rose, bacopa and fibrous begonia.
And grow plants that you want to reseed (perhaps hollyhock and ornamental curly dock) or that produce seedheads that look good through winter, such as ornamental grasses, false indigo and the taller sedums such as ‘Autumn Joy’.
Weed and water less. Covering the soil with mulch smothers emerging weed seedlings, so you weed less. It also slows water evaporation from the soil, so you water less. The type of mulch to use depends on what you grow. For vegetable gardens and beds of annual flowers, use a mulch that breaks down quickly and feeds the soil, such as pesticide-free grass clippings. Use a longer-lasting mulch, such as bark chips or cocoa hulls. around perennials and shrubs.
Skip the insecticides. Even relatively safe insecticides have their disadvantages; for example, the bacterial insecticide that kills cabbageworm also kills caterpillars that become butterflies. You vastly reduce the need for bug killers by growing a variety of plants, because a diverse garden nurtures a healthy population of good insects that eat bad insects.
You can protect plants when they’re young and vulnerable by setting up barriers. Keep ground-dwelling attackers such as cutworms and slugs away by encircling seedlings with a collar made of cardboard or small plastic food containers. Block air-born insects by laying lightweight floating row covers over the bed.
Be type B. Gardening isn’t about being in control or attaining perfection. Plants are living things, as are insects, rabbits, deer, plant diseases and all the tiny creatures that crawl underground. Accept that plants will get bigger than you expected, or stay smaller, or outright die. Accept that from the moment the first weed pops through the soil, you'll be trying to catch up on garden care. Eventually, winter will return, and the game will be over until it starts up again in spring.
Erin Hynes is the managing editor for Manage My Life. She doesn’t like the tedium of deadheading flowers but quite enjoys digging in the dirt.
