The Easy Way To Garden — Done In 7 Hours Over 4 Days (KYF166)

I was drawing a big blank… a podcast to record but no idea what to share.

Then I asked myself, “What have you done lately that you could share?”

That’s when I knew what to tell you.

Our garden was super easy to get in this year! It took just 7 hours over the course of 4 days. A bit at a time got the job done.

Now all we have to do is water, occasionally weed, and of course… eat the harvest! (Eating is my favorite part, actually!)

To watch, listen, or read how we did it, check out the audio podcast, video replay, or print notes below. Be sure to share your systems in the comments — anything you do that makes gardening easier?

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Video

I recorded this podcast live on Periscope last week, and here’s the video from that! It’s just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. 🙂

Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays!

The Easy Way To Garden: Just 7 Hours Over 4 Days To Get Our Garden In

These are the notes from what you’ll see in the video above, or hear in the podcast above.

We have 6 beds. (Actually, 7 — I forgot one when recording this!)

Here’s the background information, so you can see where I’m coming from…

One big reason our garden is so easy to plant is because my husband and the kids take care of 3 things in the spring and fall, and even throughout the year. So when it’s “my turn” to plant, it goes really fast.

Here are the 3 things:

#1 — The beds are all mulched heavily each year, both in the spring and fall, with spent hay/straw from the barn. Repurposed from other uses; we have never had to buy mulch.

#2 — We are always making compost (it’s our son’s job year-round), and the kids’ job is to add it to the beds in the spring before planting.

#3 — When the kids add compost to the beds in the spring, they also weed. Which is kinda minimal due to the mulching — however, weeding still needs to be done.

These 3 things — mulching and compost and weeding — make planting the garden so easy for me each year. In fact, it seems to get easier and easier each year!

Also important to note: I don’t sow many seeds anymore; instead I focus on putting in plants. I feel that supporting friends or family who are starting seeds is worth it, and also I’ve learned that I don’t have to grow everything. So I focus on putting in plants that are pretty mature and only things I really want to grow.

So, here’s the easy way to garden — how we got the garden in over the course of 4 days, in just a couple hours each day. (This year, I was delayed on getting it in because of our daughter’s wedding reception at the end of May.)

Day 1 — 2 hours: Deep watering of beds. Weed the beds (not much). Plant. My daughter helped. We put in all the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. We had a bunch of volunteer lettuces that we just left in place and didn’t have to plant at all!

Day 2 — 2 hours: More weeding (1 more bed that had more weeds in it than we wanted to tackle the previous day). Prune back some of the plants that over-wintered — chard and herbs mostly. Plant the herbs. (Also included in this is pulling the leaves off the sage plant so they could dry.)

Day 3 — 2 hours: Sow seeds: lettuce, carrots, radishes, beets, bush peas, bush beans. Mulch all beds.

Day 4 — 1 hour: Weed around the beds. Our garden beds are on the grass/weeds, and my husband weed whacks in there but can’t get right up to the beds, so we do the weeds right around the beds.

And that’s it! How we got the garden in in 4 days in a total of 7 hours — that’s the easy way to garden, right?!

And now.. we water, pull the occasional weeds, prune, and harvest!

Links Mentioned

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