How much time do you spend working in your garden?

[Prairie Rose]

I am curious....now that the days are getting shorter, I am losing gardening time. I did the bulk of my work in the mornings while it was still cool before I went to work, but now I'm driving to work in the dark. After work is usually a no go for me, unless I can do it in five minutes or less; I have a bad leg that needs at least an hour propped up and iced to get the swelling down, and by then my motivation is gone. The heat doesn't help, I find that as I get older I can tolerate less and less of it than I could even five years ago.

My days off are really the only time I can work outside, but I also have to do all of my housekeeping, errands, etc. I am constantly looking for ways that I can maximize my time outside, and get the most bang for my buck. It is hard to be motivated when I can only spend three or four hours a week in my garden, and it feels like I am doing the same thing over and over again and never making any progress.

I can't wait for the hottest part of summer to be out of the way so I can stay outside long enough to make some real progress towards getting things cleaned up and set up for next year....it is the only thing that is keeping me from ripping it all out and just turning it into grass. My long term goal is to set it all up in such a way that I can stay on top of it in mostly 20 minutes a day, with longer hours put in during spring and fall, when we are slow at work and the weather isn't nearly as hot. The past five years has been a series of (somewhat) failed experiments heading towards that goal. I have a plan, now it's just matter of finding the time and the money to set it up properly.

How long do you spend in your garden every week? do you feel like it is enough time to keep on top of everything? Do you have things that your prioritize with your time, or do you just let things go doing certain parts of the year?

 

[flowerbug]

we don't have just one garden, i can spend as much time as i can stand out there. in the hot part of the summer i may get only 3-4hrs a day in, but that also depends upon the weather and other family things. when it is early in the season or later when it is cooler i can get 8-12hrs in outside if my body will allow it. i also have injuries to work around but most of them respond well to heavy exercise so i just have to be careful to not make them worse by overdoing it or twisting something wrong.

if you want to check out the gardens/layouts you can see:

www.anthive.com

this morning was perfect out so i've already got 4hrs in and will be busy later today with picking some beans and putting up some pickles (hopefully the last time for this season).

with as much as we have here even with the two of us there can be times when i do let a garden go for a while. but then i eventually get back to it or Mom mows it. it took me almost a month right after the planting got done to finish up a 900 square foot garden that was overgrown, but it looks nice now and i can keep it clear in a day now. with all the rains we had i just couldn't get into it because it was mud or rain. a few hours a day in the morning when it was cool enough and perhaps a few hours in the evening and that was all i could do.

i would like to let things go a lot more than i do. i'm much more of a live-and-let live gardener if i don't need the space for something else, but Mom is the boss so i have to keep gardens much more clear of weeds and cover crops than i'd like. it's ok, i do it mostly for the exercise anyways and to be outside instead of inside. and of course to grow food.

 

[Carol Dee]

The short answer.... not enough !

 

[digitS']

I am in agreement with these two responses.

• Not enough time and
• It's good exercise that I'm better for doing.

I think back to a time when I was in my 20's and my gardening ground was about the same size as now. The only weeds were the ones hiding from me. There was also a time when I had all the ground in permanent paths and beds. Once again, weeds were very few.

All that is past with the reliance on visits from the tractor guy. Would I be able to do it without him these days? It's questionable. Should I be tending so much ground now? Questionable, again . One thing, recent years considered together (2019 is substandard ) have averaged out as productive, excess weeds or not, but a messy garden bothers me ...

There are different types of gardens. @Prairie Rose , it sounds like yours is mostly (exclusively?) a vegetable garden. I understand the lure of perennial, ornamental landscaping. However, some perennials are weed magnets and there is an enormous amount of time that can be spent in plantings that might have been thought to be plant once and you're done! Nope, difficult and time consuming to work around some plants like that.

Of course, it always depends on what crops are grown and how. Imagine a farmer hearing someone with 1,000 square feet complaining about not being able to keep up. And, that is about what folks in Cooperative Extension suggest for a family garden. These days, I read that 800 square feet is recommended. That's .02 of an acre.

Would that size or smaller be economical, re: labor and money invested? I think that it absolutely would be. Smaller yet should be as well but the reasons may be moving more and more to pleasure than practicality. Nothing at all wrong with that .

I would be curious to know what a relatively new but successful gardener like @Ben E Lou sees in the time investment to his gardening. For me, I can imagine that I can tend about 800-1000 square feet in 10 hours or less, weekly.

Steve