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Ten Steps to Garden Survival
We're busy people, and we have a big yard - just over an acre. Since we don't have a landscaping staff, we use triage, appropriate design, and organic techniques to keep things growing and looking good. Our climate, in eastern San Diego County is dry - about 9" of rain per year. It's also warm - we get frost a few times a year, and it gets into the 100s regularly in the summer and fall. We get Santa Anas - dry, hot, windy weather that last about 3 days. There's no such thing as "the end of the season" here. I always say "If necessity is the mother of invention, then laziness is the mother of efficiency." Well here are my 10 tips to more efficient gardening - how to manage your yard when you have little time, and no help. 1. Keep the trees watered. Mature trees are impossible to replace. Don't let them die. Trees that have been weakened by stress (like say... from not watering them) are likely to succumb to attacks by insects (boring beetles) or diseases. It easy to water trees. Water them deeply, and let the soil dry out between waterings. You can tear out and replant a big flowerbed in a weekend. You can grow good-sized shrubs in a matter of months. But trees take time. Manure happens. We get busy with work, family emergencies, illness... Even if you let everything else in the yard go to pieces, water the trees. 2. Use plenty of mulch. Mulch keeps weeds from growing in pathways and flower beds, and helps hold water in the soil around trees and other plants. You can get it free from tree trimming companies. It keeps soil from splashing up onto leaves when it rains, or when you water. Mulch protects the soil, roots, and beneficial insects from the blazing sun in summer. Eventually it rots, and makes the soil richer. Mulch makes your yard more tolerant of neglect! 3. Water those flowers you want to grow. It's true in management, and horse training, and it's true in your yard: Water anything you want to grow. Even if you haven't planted anything, and just get weeds, heck, they are green - and some are very pretty. So mow them or till them into the soil. Free fertilizer! And thriving "weeds" look pretty, help hold soil on hills, help loosen compacted soil, and give ladybugs and other beneficial insects a place to live, so they can help your other plants. 3.5. Conversely, don't water where you don't want things to grow. Since we get so little rain, an easy way to keep weeds from coming up is to just not water there. So don't water pathways, dirt/gravel parking areas, or other places you don't want to have to mow or weed. 4. Choose plants that want to grow in your yard. Plant native, drought-tolerant, and low-water-use plants. If it's growing in my yard, it's easy to grow. Unless you are passionate about some specialty plant, and are willing to put in the effort to keep it going, choose the sort of plants that are best suited to growing in the conditions you have to offer. There are wonderful books you can study to learn which plants are supposed to work well in your area. They have zones and charts, and hundreds of pages of descriptions and tiny drawings or photos. But the easier and more fun way is to walk around your neighborhood and see what's growing. Out by us, you will see enormous, dramatic bright red-pink bouganvillas devouring chain link fences in yards that obviously haven't been pampered - and those are the best yards to watch. Citrus and pepper trees seem to be everywhere around here too, so they would be a safe bet. If you're not sure what will grow best in an area, plant several kinds of plants, and let them fight it out (sword ferns, mint, ivy). If something volunteers to grow in your yard, think twice before pulling it out. Find out what it is first, and think about whether it might work there - or could it be moved. It's a free plant that wants to grow in your yard - what could be easier? We have a large oak, and lots of small baby oaks. I don't think I could grow an oak tree if I tried, but there they are, courtesy of blue jays and rain. 5. Design for a casual, thriving look. Do not attempt a formal garden, with evenly-spaced, carefully shaped plants. When you have to let them fend for themselves for a month, while you work long hours on some project, they will quickly look awful. Weeds will grow in the spaces between them, and they will look like somebody overdue for a haircut. Instead, go for the cottage garden look - with a variety of plants growing informally together. That way, if one dies, you don't have a gaping space - nobody will be the wiser. Dense planting blocks weeds out. If a weed does come up, nobody will notice it. 6. "Poquito a poquito" - little by little. Avoid thinking in terms of big yardwork "projects". Our neighbors from Mexico remind us of this one regularly - when they see me working in the yard as they walk by they often wave and call out "Poquito a poquito!" Little by little. Gardens happen over time - be patient. Think in terms of many small, easy steps in the right direction. Every time you have a few minutes - between other activities, while waiting for people - do something. Don't worry about getting it right, or finishing it. If you only have time to pull a few weeds, and drop them right on the spot, great! No need to drag out the trash can, a bucket of tools, the rototiller... If you don't have time to do a job "just so", then do it badly, and hope for the best. Mow, but don't rake, if that's all you can do that day - it beats not mowing at all. Before a recent series of rainstorns I went out at the last minute and flung 20 pounds of grass seed in the front and back yards. I didn't dethatch anything first, or prepare the soil by raking. The best I could do that day was to fling it and cross my fingers. I took advantage of the predicted rains so I wouldn't have to remember to water the baby grass for two weeks. It worked - things are greening up nicely. Not perfect, but better than not having done it at all. 7. Keep your tools handy, and use tools you like. Keep a few favorite tools right by the back door - maybe a Hula-Hoe, a leaf rake, and a hand cultivator - plus slip-on shoes, and your gloves. If it's a project to find your gardening clogs in the back closet, unlock the shed - ooh, find the key, get out the tools... nevermind putting them all away... you'll put off working in the yard. If they are right there at hand, you can grab one, and go attack one manageable little chunk of your yard. And if there are tools you just dread using, find an alternative. I hate string trimmers. They are noisy, heavy, they hurt my hands, they shoot rocks at the vehicles, they shread plants instead of cutting them. They run out of gas, and they need the string replaced frequently. So instead, I use a sort of serrated machete-on-a-stick tool - the kind you used to see prisoners swinging along roadsides to clear weeds. Great things! They never break, they don't need gas, they don't need new string, and they aren't hard to start. They are silent, so I can use mine early in the morning, late in the evening, or when the neighbors are having a nice pool party nextdoor. Plus, they are great exercise, and you can practice your golf swing while you work. And they do a better job of clearing weeds, faster and easier, than the string trimmers. 8. Get a phone with a headset, and radio headphones Some aspects of gardening are dull. If the idea of pulling weeds for an hour, alone, in silence, bores you to tears, there are several easy solutions. You could get a hands-free earpiece for your cell phone or cordless home phone, and chat with friends while you work. Gardening is often the only time I have the opportunity to keep in touch with people. You can kill an hour, and make great progress in the yard, while catching up with friends and family, and you'll hardly know you were working. Or get a headphone radio, or mp3 player, and listen to your favorite music or radio shows. I make a point of doing gardening during the show "A Prairie Home Companion" on KBPS - a two hour variety show of music and humor. That show can get you through tidying up a big flowerbed, or cleaning the entire horse pen. 9. Let animals and bugs do your work for you. A friend has 12 acres of steep land. No sense in her doing all the weed abatement work, she'd getting a little herd of goats who will be thrilled to do it for her, for free. Chickens in your yard will eat bugs and weeds spouts, and give you eggs and fertilizer. As with plants, when insects show up, figure out what they are before assuming you need to get rid of them. The first time I saw little orange scaly-mealybug-looking things all over my yard I had no idea what they were. But rather than spray poison, I waited and watched them for a few weeks - they were the larva of ladybugs! We have plenty of spiders and lizards for insect control. I have big black wasps that hunt for tomato worms - and I've never lost a tomato plant to worms. One time I looked at a big bush outside my home office window, and there were aphids all over it. I thought "Darn... must get the Safer's Soap and spray those buggers." I didn't get around to it, but pretty soon I noticed these flocks of a dozens of tiny birds (finches?), just "attacking" the bush every so often - picking bugs from under the leaves. They must've kept the aphids in check, 'cause they never damaged the plant. My horse and donkeys keep the back yard trimmed. They are let out to do "weed abatement" in the backyard every afternoon. I have to get out there and take care of the big yucky stuff that they don't like. Everything else is neatly trimmed to about 2" high. I keep telling my neighbor that she needs a couple of sheep. She's older, widowed, and her yard is getting out of control. She's feeling overwhelmed. She could use a couple of critters to keep the weeds down. 10. Take what you can get. Keep your style and expectations appropriate for the time you have available. If it's green, fruiting, or flowering, hooray! Our "lawn" is made up of dozens of kinds of plants, and at least three colors of flowers. It's very pretty! That aphid-infested plant outside my office window? The thistle weeds, when they go to seed? Automatic birdfeeders! We have some beautiful bunches of yellow flowers in our yard - thousands of them - every Spring. They are bulbs that have naturalized under the trees and in the grassy areas. I'm sure you've seen them - as a kid I knew them as "sourgrass". I've always liked the look of them, but thought of them as a "weed" (not that I ever did anything about them!). Then one day I saw them in a seed catalog - three little bulbs for a dollar. We must have 10,000 bulbs in our yard - we could never afford to plant them, but there they are, for free! |