If you’ve ever planned a garden that looked amazing on paper and then halfway through summer you thought, “I do not have the time for this,” this episode is for you.
Because a garden can be beautiful, productive, and fun and still be too much if the plan doesn’t match your real life.
Today on Just Grow Something we’re building a low-maintenance garden plan. Not by choosing “easy plants,” but by designing your garden around the things that actually determine how much work it takes: location, layout, watering, weed control, and disease pressure and how that fits into the rest of your actual life.
Low-maintenance does not mean low-yield. It means fewer chores that pile up, fewer “emergency problems,” and a garden that still functions when your life gets busy.
As we go, I’ll give you simple action steps you can do in January to set this up. Because the easiest gardening season is the one you design on purpose.
Let's dig in.
References and Resources:
My Plan Like A Pro Course is Open for Registration: https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/pro
University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension. “Beginning Vegetable Garden Basics: Site Selection and Soil Preparation.” https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/beginning-vegetable-garden-basics-site-selection-and-soil-preparation
Colorado State University Extension. “Drip Irrigation for Home Gardens.” https://extension.colostate.edu/resource/drip-irrigation-for-home-gardens/
University of Minnesota Extension. “Mulching 101: the secret to a healthy and happy garden.” https://extension.umn.edu/news/mulching-101-secret-healthy-and-happy-garden
Oregon State University Extension Service. “Sheet mulching and lasagna composting with cardboard.” https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/em-9559-sheet-mulching-lasagna-composting-cardboard
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A garden can be beautiful and productive and fun and still be
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too much if the plan doesn't match our real life.
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And halfway through the summer we decide I don't have time for
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this. So today we are building a low
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maintenance garden plant. Not by choosing easy plants and
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I'm using ear buddies here, but by designing your garden around
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the things that actually determine how much work it is,
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the location, it's layout, watering, need control and
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disease pressure and how that fits into the rest of your
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actual life. Low maintenance does not mean
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low yield. It means fewer chores that pile
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up, fewer emergency problems, and a garden that still
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functions when your life gets busy.
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As we go again, I'm going to give you simple action steps
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that you can do in January to set this up.
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Because the easiest garden season is the one that you
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design on purpose. You're listening to Just grow
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something. I'm Karen Velez, specialty crop
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farmer, horticulturist and garden science geek.
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Around here, we focus on simple, evidence based steps to help you
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grow more food with less stress. We talk timing, soil watering,
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pests, and the little decisions that make a big difference.
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Whether you're gardening in a backyard, a few raised beds, or
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just a couple of containers. Let's dig in.
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Today we are continuing our January planning series by
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building the kind of garden plan that you can actually follow
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through on. This month.
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We've been laying down planning foundations, right?
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Making decisions before the season starts so that you're not
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improvising everything when you're hot and tired and trying
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to remember what you planted where.
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A big part of the planning approach that I teach in Plan
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Like a Pro is determining your goals and laying out your crops
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and your timelines so that it fits into your life.
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So today's episode is all about designing your garden for your
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time, your energy, and your space with practical strategies
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that reduce the maintenance. Before we get tactical, let's
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define low maintenance. A low maintenance garden is not
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a garden where you never do anything right.
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A low maintenance garden is a garden where routine tasks are
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easy to do consistently. Weeds are prevented early on so
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they don't become a crisis. Watering is efficient and
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convenient. Your layout reduces wasted steps
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and awkward reaching and any of that soil compaction.
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And you reduce the conditions that invite diseases and pests.
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That's the core of it. And you'll hear this theme
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across like extension guidance, right?
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Good results come from good site selection, smart layout, and
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good management, not from exhausting yourself playing
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catch up in July. And oh, am I speaking from
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experience here. OK, so I'm going to walk you
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through a framework that I want you to picture like 5 different
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levers that you can pull to activate an easier summer.
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So the five different dials that you can control or the five
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different levers that you can pull are convenience, layout,
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water, weeds and problems. And we will go through these one
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by one, the first one being convenience.
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Put the garden where you'll actually use it.
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OK, I know this sounds almost too basic but put the garden
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where you can easily get to it and where water is convenient.
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This is actually an important planning factor because a garden
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that is close to the home and close to water is easier to
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maintain and easier to harvest from.
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Now I understand not everyone has space at their own home to
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garden and you may be using a community garden or an
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allotment, so take this for what it's worth, but when it is
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located at your home, this convenience matters more than
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people expect. It's the entire reason that I
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have a kitchen garden that is now expanded to like 20 raised
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beds when I have 4 full acres of planting area elsewhere on this
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farm. When I want to harvest some
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stuff just real quick for dinner, I don't want to have to
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walk into multiple crop fields to go and pick what I need.
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So I created the kitchen garden so that the crops that I use
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most in my kitchen were much more conveniently located.
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The same thing goes for watering.
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If watering requires you dragging a hose across the yard
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every single time and then trying to move it around while
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you avoid it hitting crops or falling onto things, then
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watering becomes a sort of sometimes task instead of
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something that you routinely do. And if you live somewhere that
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is super dry and hot, where watering is absolutely a
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necessity in the garden, then this inconsistency is where your
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garden is going to start to struggle.
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So ask yourself, can I reach my garden in under 10 to 15 seconds
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from the door that I use the most?
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So this might be your back door if you're using your back, you
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know, a back kitchen area kitchen garden.
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Or it might be your front door, if it's out front, whatever.
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And if not, is there another location that's more practical
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for the garden? Now you might not be able to
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change the location, and that's OK.
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But if you can place a new bed or expand or redesign, then
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convenience is a very high impact decision.
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And now, of course, good site selection also means avoiding
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competition and shade from like trees and shrubs and buildings.
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So we kind of need to balance the convenience of location with
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choosing a site that has sufficient sunlight.
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So we're looking for a location that is both sunny enough for
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your goals and convenient enough to maintain consistently.
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And we want to make sure that we have access to that water as
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well for that sort of low maintenance planning factor,
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right? That is our first lever.
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The second lever that we pull is our layout.
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We are designing for reach and our paths and just taking fewer
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steps because that layout determines how much effort the
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basic tasks take. So the first thing is to not
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make the beds so wide that we have to step into them.
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They should be narrow enough that we can reach into the bed
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without stepping on the soil. And this goes for raised
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planters. And in ground beds, the most
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common recommendation is about 3 to 4 feet wide or 36 to 48
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inches, so that most adults can reach from both sides without
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getting in there and compacting the soil.
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Why does this matter? Well, compaction matters because
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compacted soil reduces that pore space, and so that can make
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growth and water movement worse. Plus it makes wedding and
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planting harder. So if we're keeping our feet out
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of the bed, this is a very practical, low maintenance move.
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The second part of this is planning the pads in our garden
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so they're not wasted space, right?
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Paths are what make maintenance of these beds possible.
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So if we have raised beds, then narrower paths might work for
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just foot traffic, but wider paths are going to be necessary
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if we're going to use a cart or a wheelbarrow or something.
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So often times this looks like being 2 or even 3 feet wide,
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sometimes more depending on access needs.
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If you have somebody who's in a wheelchair or a Walker who's
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going to be in the in the garden frequently, right 18 to 24
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inches can be an ideal range for a comfortable pathway for a lot
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of home setups. Wider spacing if you need those
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carts or that accessibility. Make this decision based on your
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needs and what you're using for equipment and who is going to be
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working in the garden with raised beds.
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You know, if this ends up being inconvenience and it doesn't
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work for you, it's a little bit more difficult to move these
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things around without having to completely empty them out and
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then shift the layout. So this requires some
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forethought when you're in an in ground bed, it's a little bit
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easier sometimes to kind of shift those beds around if they
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haven't been in place for an extended period of time.
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It might be easy to just sort of dig everything up and loosen
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everything up and then shift the beds around a little bit.
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But it's still to be something that's at the forefront of your
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mind to make things more convenient to work in.
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The third part of this would be reducing your sort of travel
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time inside the garden, right? A low maintenance garden is
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designed so that the most frequent tasks happen in the
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easiest places. So this might mean putting your
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most frequently harvested crops closest to the easiest access
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point to your garden. You might put your less
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frequently harvested crops further away, right, so you're
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not making unnecessary trips back and forth.
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If you've got this reversed, you might put wider paths throughout
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the entire garden rather than just on the edges if you want to
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accommodate, you know, larger wheelbarrows or something so
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that you're reducing the time walking back and forth.
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Or you might put multiple points where you can access water so
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you're not dragging a hose all over the garden and trying to
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avoid damaging the crops in the process.
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Make harvesting and moving around the garden as low
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friction as possible. This is planning for our human
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behavior and that is going to save save us time and effort in
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the process. So the third lever is water, and
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that is to make watering efficient and just sort of brain
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easy, right? If there's one system that can
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dramatically reduce weekly gardening workload, it's your
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watering system. If you are in an area where you
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frequently have to irrigate. Some of us can get away with not
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having to do a lot of watering based on where we are or based
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on our mulching systems. But if you do have to water on a
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regular basis, then drip irrigation is highly efficient
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because it delivers water directly to the soil near the
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roots. This actually means that your
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watering is about 90% or more efficient compared to like using
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sprinklers, and it can reduce wasted water when you design it
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properly. Another low maintenance benefit
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to this is also that it's keeping the foliage dryer, which
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can reduce the conditions that favor certain plant diseases.
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So that's just something else that's going to reduce the
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amount of maintenance that you have to do in the garden, right?
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You don't have to have drip irrigation to have a successful
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garden, but if you are aiming for low maintenance, then drip
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irrigation is one of these strongest levers that you can
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pull. Another factor that contributes
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to water efficiency is mulch. Up until two years ago, we had 0
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irrigation on our farm in any of our fields.
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None. We had an emergency system that
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consisted of loading a tank of water onto a trailer and hauling
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it into the field and then hand watering by using a little
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simple pump that was attached to a 12 Volt battery.
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And so this was something that we only use when we were in
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severe drought conditions and we were facing an emergency in
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terms of our crops just completely dying.
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And the reason that we could get away with only having this
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system was due to heavy layers of mulch.
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Mulch traps the moisture in the soil.
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It prevents runoff during heavy rain events, and it keeps the
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soil cooler, which helps the plants transpire less, which
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further reduces the amount of water that they need to pull
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from the soil. So you want low maintenance and
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less need for watering at all. Start with two to three inches
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of mulch on the top of the soil and see how much that reduces
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your need to water at all. And then combine this with
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grouping your crops by their watering needs.
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So you keep thirsty crops together, right?
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You're watering fewer areas overall when you do have to
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water if you have those things combined into one area.
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If you choose a drip irrigation system, then you can set it up
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on a timer to water on schedule. You know, don't just set it and
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forget it. Make sure you're re evaluating
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the plants needs throughout the season.
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Then you can also set it up on zones too.
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So if you have crops that are grouped together that don't mind
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dryer conditions, you don't have to be watering them all the time
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at the same way that you are the crops that are grouped together
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that require more water. OK, Remember, no matter which
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way you choose to water, whether it's hand watering or sprinklers
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or drip irrigation or soaker hoses or whatever, we want less
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frequent, more thorough watering because that is the key to
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healthy, lower maintenance plants.
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So level #4 is weeds, right? The number one reason that many
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gardens feel high maintenance and and really low maintenance.
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Weed control is mostly about prevention.
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We want to prevent the problem instead of fighting it.
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And honestly, the research is very clear.
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Mulch works OK. So not only is mulch helpful for
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conserving moisture, but it is also fabulous for suppressing
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weeds. It's helpful for annual weeds
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because it's preventing them from reaching the soil surface
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when they blow in on the wind, and it's also reducing the light
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at the soil surface to keep those weed seeds that already
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exists in the soil from sprouting.
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And if you use something like straw mulch or wood chips, it
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also makes it easier to see those weeds, especially
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perennial weeds, when they pop through and just be able to grab
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them before they really take hold.
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Now, mulch does have its trade off sometimes, I will fully
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admit that even though it's one of my favorite topics to talk
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about and we do want to follow best practices like choosing the
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appropriate materials and applying it at the right depth
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and understanding that some weeds can still emerge.
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It's not a foolproof system, but if you start with a bed that
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you've already cleared most of the weeds out of and add some
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mulch, you will reduce the number of new weed seeds that
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can successfully germinate. You can also use sheet mulching
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to create a new bed. So sheet mulching basically uses
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a barrier labor layer. Usually this is like cardboard
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or paper or something, and then you cover it with mulch to
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smother the existing vegetation and to block the light.
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This is a really quick and very accessible way to protect beds
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from weeds when you are creating a new bed or fully clearing an
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existing one that maybe has gotten a little out of control
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with the weed pressure so that you can start fresh the next
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season. If you're expanding beds or
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you're converting a lawn, are you reclaiming a space or
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whatever? Sheet mulching can also shift a
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lot of that weed work from the summer time into the winter or
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the early spring where it's typically easier to manage.
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I typically prefer organic mulches in the garden, but there
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may also be some benefit to landscape fabrics or geotextiles
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as weed barriers because they allow water and air to move
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through while reducing that weed germination.
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Especially when they are installed over like a weed free
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soil and they're very well managed.
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You just have to remember with these barriers that you need to
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remove them at the end of the season.
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The soil does need to breathe and unfortunately that means you
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either need to plant a cover crop in that bed or cover it
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with an organic mulch so you don't leave the soil exposed.
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So I just tend nowadays towards organic mulches.
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I only use like landscape fabrics in very specific beds,
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generally the ones that have sort of a perennial weed
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problem. So whether you use organic mulch
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or barriers or both, the low maintenance principle is
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basically the same. You want to block the light,
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reduce the bare soil, and make wedding a small routine that you
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can do fairly quickly every week so that it's not a rescue
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mission that you're forced into in the Midsummer when things are
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absolutely overrun. And our fifth lever is just
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those generalized problems, mostly disease and pest
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pressure, right? A garden becomes high
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maintenance when it has frequent problem solving moments, whether
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that's disease outbreaks or a pest blow up or plants that are
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struggling and they need constant intervention.
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You can't eliminate pests and diseases entirely.
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We are not gardening in a vacuum, but we can reduce risk
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through proper planning. So the first way to do this is
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to choose disease resistant varieties when possible.
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If you have a continued or repeated problem with specific
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diseases, then selecting resistant varieties is one of
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the simplest ways to reduce disease issues, right?
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Especially for common problems that repeat year after year
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after year, the low maintenance garden plan is going to use
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variety selection as prevention. So if you've battled certain
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diseases before, resistance becomes a priority filter for
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you when you are choosing which seeds to grow.
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The next part of this is reducing that leaf wetness and
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improving the airflow. So this ties back to our
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irrigation methods, and it also considers our plant spacing a
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little bit. OK.
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So drip irrigation can help keep the foliage dryer compared with
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overhead watering. But we also want to think about
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practical spacing. We want spacing and bed design
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to support airflow because that can reduce those favorable
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conditions for a lot of those diseases.
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So if your garden is more prone to foliar diseases and you may
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need to plan for some additional spacing in between plants or
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even going with more vertical crops with trellises combined
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with that soil level watering to make for less maintenance later
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on in the season. This is all very specific to
00:17:39
your garden and the problems that you tend to see on a
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regular basis. The third part of this for some
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gardens is going to be a simple sort of awareness of crop
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rotation. Even small gardens can benefit
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from tracking what went where and avoiding repeating the same
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plant families in the same exact spot when possible.
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So if you've seen plant diseases, specifically soil
00:18:03
borne plant diseases, then you will benefit from crop rotation.
00:18:07
If you've seen some nutrient deficiencies and you've planted
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the same plant family in the same spot for multiple years,
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you likely will benefit from some some crop rotation.
00:18:18
This is not something on the stickler about necessarily if
00:18:21
you've not seen any signs of trouble, especially if you're
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doing a lot of inter planting. But if you've experienced
00:18:26
issues, then record keeping and rotation awareness is part of a
00:18:30
long term success and it is a way to keep the garden much more
00:18:35
low maintenance. Now let's pull all five of these
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levers and fit them into to a single planning concept.
00:18:42
We will call this your maintenance budget.
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OK? Your maintenance budget is how
00:18:47
much time you can realistically spend every week on average
00:18:53
during the busiest part of the season.
00:18:56
Maintaining the garden, OK? Not the time that you wish you
00:18:59
have. What time you truly have.
00:19:03
This could be 30 minutes a week. This could be 60 minutes a week.
00:19:06
This could be two hours a week. Whatever fits your Life OK?
00:19:09
Low maintenance garden plan has to fit inside that time budget
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and we do that through careful design, not willpower.
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OK? Trust me.
00:19:20
As our farming journey has continued for going on 19 years
00:19:24
now serving the public, I had to get really specific with my time
00:19:28
budget. Especially as the kids have
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grown up and moved away and we've stopped hiring people to
00:19:34
help as much and more of the workload has fallen to only me
00:19:38
and my husband. But the demand for our products
00:19:42
has only continued to increase. And so I had to design my
00:19:45
gardens to be much more low maintenance to fit the amount of
00:19:50
hours that I have to actually work in them, while also
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committing time to sales and deliveries and marketing and all
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the other things that going into running a farm business.
00:20:00
So believe me when I say setting a time budget for your garden
00:20:04
activities and designing your garden around what's reasonable
00:20:08
in your day-to-day. Life is the key to a low
00:20:12
maintenance garden plan and just a lower stress gardening season
00:20:16
overall. OK, so choose your weekly time
00:20:21
number. How many minutes per week do you
00:20:23
have to dedicated to garden maintenance during the busiest
00:20:27
part of your season? You may need to take into
00:20:30
consideration that early in the spring you might have a lot of
00:20:32
time, but in the middle of the summer you might be getting
00:20:36
pulled 10 different directions with activities or vacations or
00:20:39
whatever. So choose the number that is the
00:20:42
lowest that you will have available during the season, OK?
00:20:45
Once you choose that number, you design around it.
00:20:49
This might mean a smaller footprint.
00:20:51
This might mean narrower beds with really good access.
00:20:55
Putting a mulch plan in place, simplifying your watering,
00:20:58
making it more convenient, choosing some crops
00:21:01
strategically, right? So if you're aiming for low
00:21:04
maintenance, this is where you choose to be realistic and then
00:21:07
you let the plan support you. So there are a few things that
00:21:10
are going to automatically make your garden more high
00:21:13
maintenance rather than low maintenance.
00:21:15
I mean, if you get too big too soon, you know, I've been there.
00:21:18
We expanded our gardens really quickly once we moved to the
00:21:22
five acre homestead and I really probably should have started
00:21:25
with a more manageable size and expanded later.
00:21:28
Having bare soil everywhere, that is always, always going to
00:21:32
cause you more maintenance in terms of soil management, in
00:21:37
terms of watering, in terms of weed management.
00:21:40
So use that mulch strategically. Start mulching very, very early
00:21:44
and intentionally. If your watering is
00:21:47
inconvenient, you know that can really cause more maintenance
00:21:51
for you. So place your garden near water
00:21:53
if you need it or and choose a delivery method that's going to
00:21:56
match the amount of time that you have in the garden.
00:21:59
If you only have 30 minutes a week to do garden maintenance
00:22:02
and your watering by hand, guess what?
00:22:05
That's definitely taking probably all of your time in the
00:22:09
garden and it's not giving you any other opportunity for things
00:22:12
like wedding or maintaining your mulch or anything else.
00:22:14
OK. Another problem would be that
00:22:16
your beds are just too wide or you know, the pads are just too
00:22:20
tight based on your beds. So you want to design for reach
00:22:23
and for movement and then repeated diseases year after
00:22:27
year. You know, that is definitely
00:22:29
going to take up a whole lot of your time and definitely prove
00:22:33
to be more high maintenance. So use resistant varieties where
00:22:36
you can adjust your practices so that you're not actually
00:22:40
contributing to that disease pressure.
00:22:42
So if you want a simple way to implement this, right, just
00:22:46
write down your weekly maintenance budget number,
00:22:49
figure that out first, and then go through and figure out your
00:22:53
garden footprint based on that number, based on the amount of
00:22:56
time that you have to work in the garden.
00:22:58
Confirm those bed widths and those pathways to make sure that
00:23:02
they fit. You know how you move and work
00:23:04
in the garden and figure out how to adjust that if you need to
00:23:08
choose your watering method and choose your weed prevention
00:23:12
plan. So if it's mulch or if it's
00:23:13
sheet mulch or if you're using barriers or combination of some
00:23:16
sort, right? And then if you have had problem
00:23:20
diseases, then add one problem prevention note resistant
00:23:24
varieties or you know, changing the way that you're watering so
00:23:28
you're reducing that leaf wetness or crop rotation,
00:23:30
whatever it is right, Right there in just those few steps,
00:23:34
you have actually created yourself a low maintenance
00:23:37
garden plan. OK, so a low maintenance garden
00:23:43
is built by pulling 5 weavers, convenience layout, watering
00:23:50
weeds and problem prevention. If you make adjustments and you
00:23:53
pull these levers now in January, you are not trying to
00:23:57
work harder later. You are setting up a season that
00:24:01
makes the season easier. OK, in the show notes once again
00:24:04
this week, I am going to include links to the extension resources
00:24:07
that I have referenced. Bed dimensions and pass spacing,
00:24:10
garden site select collection, convenience, drip irrigation,
00:24:13
all of the things. OK.
00:24:15
And the next time we are going to keep on building this
00:24:17
planning foundation because once your garden is designed to be
00:24:20
maintainable, decisions about timing and successions and
00:24:24
variety choice get a whole lot easier.
00:24:27
Until next time, my gardening friends, keep on cultivating
00:24:29
that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.