Everyone hates heading out into the garden to water and weed, especially when it seems like we’re doing it every few days. But what if we told you there were some simple steps you could take to reduce the amount of time you pend working in your garden? Well, today we’ve got some hints for reducing the amount of time and effort needed to water and weed.
Courtesy: Alan Cleaver, via Flickr.
Reducing Weeding Time
More Plants: The more plants you have in the garden that you want to have in the garden, the less room and nutrients there is to go around for the weeds that you would rather not have springing up in your garden. Weeds will not thrive if you don’t give them the space to grow, so having more plants you want will cut down on weeding time. Just don’t plant your wanted plants too close together – as we discussed here, that can be a recipe for diseases to thrive, which is even worse than having a few extra weeds to pull.
Compact Soil: If you turn up and loosen the soil through tilling it year after year, you’ll likely end up weeding more often. Loosening the soil and turning it up allows the weed seeds to have easier access to sun and water, meaning they are more likely to germinate. Only turn out as much area as you will need to plant new growth, let all the rest sit tight.
Compost Selectively: If you just toss all of your garden detritus into your compost pile, chances are you’re throwing weeds in there and helping them to develop and breed in the compost. Putting this compost back in the garden will increase weeding time. Make sure to remove all weeds from your compost pile.
Reducing Watering Time
We’ve covered plenty of ways to reduce watering time in the past, as part of the idea of developing gardens that can easily deal with drought or that will help you develop the idea of xeriscaping. Additional ideas on top of those include:
- Group Plants by Watering Needs – If you group plants with similar watering schedules close together, you can concentrate on the plants that need immediate watering, instead of just blanketing the entire garden.
- Single Container instead of Multiple Containers – If you have a container garden, less containers mean less time watering. Grouping the containers together will also reduce the watering time.
Reducing both Weeding and Watering Time
There’s very little you can do that will reduce both watering and weeding necessities. There is only one sure-fire way to do both – and that is to mulch. This will help the soil to hold water, and to remain cool and moist, which will reduce watering time. It will also prevent any weeds that are buried under the mulch from receiving any sun, meaning they won’t grow and you won’t have to spend as much time weeding. However, after a while, mulch decomposes into soil, and will become a home for weeds it it is not continually mulched every season.
So don’t spend as much time weeding and watering your lawn and garden this summer, and spend a little more time enjoying it. You’ll never remove these activities from your garden upkeep regimen, but you can reduce the amount of time you spend on them.
