How to be a Lazy Gardener
I have a perfect garden in my head. A large fenced area with creeping flowers, like hollyhocks, and wild flowers crawling up the side, and marigolds along the inside perimeter (to keep away the snakes of course). Several nice garden boxes, a nice big hydroponic greenhouse for tomatoes, peppers and herbs, with a small potters shed attached. Gravel aisleways between the boxes and nice big pots of flowers.
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| Hauser Homestead Garden |
I'm getting there, and maybe one day I will have it. I had a greenhouse, and we are planning a larger one this year, we have raised boxes, and many need to be replaced, but slowly and surely they are. I'm figuring out the perennials still, but I have the fence for them. I'm on my way to what I think my perfect garden is, but many people would think it was messy, or not their idea of a nice garden, or even too big for what we need. That's fine, what we all like is different.
A perfect garden for you might be a little patio box, maybe it is the community garden where you get to share what you grow, or get to try something you just can't grow. Maybe, you like flowers, maybe you like native plants best to get all the bees.
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| Chickens helping me till up the dirt (talk about lazy!) |
I'm a lazy gardener. I am not out everyday weeding. I'm so terrified of snakes that there are times in the middle of summer I won't even step out into the garden, because the natural grasses and weeds have taken over the outside of the boxes and my saviour husband hasn't gone and weed-wacked everything yet and braved the snakes so I can enjoy my garden again. We weren't fixing holes in the greenhouse, and had a racoon and her baby living in there over winter once.
Don't get me wrong, I work HARD to put my garden in every year. I till up the soil meticulously take all the roots out to try to keep weeds at bay. I talk to the worms and thank them for giving me rich soil, and I add our special blend of goat/chicken manure into the mix. I check PH balances exactly once, and I make a grand gesture of making a garden map every year, or else I may not remember if that is parsley or poison hemlock. I don't really want to mix up the 2.
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| Homegrown seeds |
I spend a good chunk of February and March planning my garden, starting seeds that should be started, researching new varieties of old favourites, looking for what I can do better. I love sowing seeds I collected myself, and then watching them actually sprout. These are the babies of my successful garden from last year, it is so exciting! For the first 2-4 weeks after the frost, I am out there until I see sprouts everywhere, I re-seed where I need to and thin out what I see.
Then I fall off. We are camping, we have visitors from the other side of the country
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| Garlic Scapes |
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| Radishes |
And you know what? It works for me. I'm not the best gardener by any means. I can grow a mean tomato, amazing garlic, the best and most endless basil ever. Green onions, Cardamom, Parsley Dill, Beans, Peas, and Carrots are super easy for me.
I can start any seed and get it to flowering, and then I have to hit the books, cause that is usually where it either goes good, or I just get a lot of greenery. I am GREAT at getting plants to go to seed, which is also fine, because, I like collecting seeds. I think I like it better than the collecting vegetables from the garden.
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| My hydroponic mini-garden |
I got a small hydroponics seed starter last year. I love it. It lets me have useful plants in the house and boy, have I learned a lot about gardening from it. Right now, in February, I have hot pepper plants that I transplanted from my hydroponic garden to pots and they are on their 3rd batch of peppers. I'm not sure how long they will keep flowering, but I'm ready to go on the journey with them. I learned how to pollinate my own plants, and be a bee. That was cool. I have mini tomatoes, and all kinds of herbs growing in my kitchen, in winter. WOW!
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| Hot Peppers (IN WINTER!) |
You know what I could grow 10 years ago? I could put transplant flowers in a pot with other transplant flowers, and half of them would live. I was an amazing transplanter (at
least half the time)
Here's the thing though, you don't have to be an amazing gardener, or even have a slightly shaded green thumb to grow a garden. I talk to many people who say they wish they could grow SOMETHING. You can, you have to be realistic about it.
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| Baby Tomatoes |
Do some reading, or take a class and learn what others are doing, and the problems they faced. Start small, and get it to a point where you give it space and let it grow. Nature is amazing at helping that green into an deep emerald. Being lazy might just be your answer. A positive attitude (and a little stubborness) never hurts either.
If you are interested in learning more about seed starting or getting your garden started. Get in touch. We have a seed starting class in March, and you can find it here. You get some Hauser Homestead seeds and our blend of dirt to take home, and a seed starting kit.
If you want to get some resources on beginning gardening, here are a few of my go to books
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| Organic Hobby Farming by Andy Tomolonis |
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| Raised Bed Gardening for beginners by Tammy Wylie |