If the first installment on lazy gardening wasn’t enough, here’s more. If it was enough… well, here’s more anyway.
- Collect rainwater. What could be easier than setting up a barrel underneath your gutter? Seriously. I can do that. Then you’ve got this great supply of water right outside where you need it. Keep a bucket or watering can nearby, dunk it in the waterbarrel to fill it up, and you can water your container plants and your little herb garden without hauling out the hose. If you’re feeling an energy surge, you can get even more useful with your rainwater by using a barrel with a spigot and attaching a hose. Watch this video for the step-by-step.
- Create some hidey-holes for frogs. Frogs are handy, helpful little creatures who will be quite delighted to eat up some other unhelpful little creatures in your garden. Build it, and they will come… They need a little safe spot to hide in, like a pile of sticks in a shady spot, and they’ll need easy access to water. Read through a few posts about froggy-went-a-gardening from the Sustainable Garden blog for more ideas. What could be easier than having frogs take care of the pests for you?
- Grow what you will actually eat. The only thing worse than not having home grown produce in the summer? Having too much home grown produce in the summer, as in a basketful of squash every day, more tomatoes than you Great Aunt Millie could can, rosemary bushes the size of shrubs. You can only give away so many baskets of cucumbers. So don’t plant stuff you don’t really like to eat, and don’t plant a whole row of anything unless you have ten dependents who will be surviving off the produce.
- Use native plants for landscaping. Out of the vegetable gardening realm, think naturally (and lazy) for your landscaping and ornamental options as well. Using native plants will be more beneficial to the birds and bees (and frogs) and (shocking, I know) the plants will grow better in their native environment. You won’t have to water as much (maybe even never, though you’ll have sufficient rainwater collected if you do need to water… right?). Native plants will withstand the extremes of your locale a lot better than anything brought in will. Easier on you. This 2004 profile of a natural garden in Seattle will give you some good ideas.
More resources:
Natural Gardening Blog.
Organic gardening tips.
Natural garden products.
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I love bare feet, Dr. Bronner's, cotton skirts, summer rain, winter snow, new places, open-minded people, deep conversations.
I had a (short-lived) natural products company while I was in college: The Full Nelson Natural Products...
