Optimistic strategies for a better garden in 2025 – Part One.
As I’ve mentioned >before<, last year in the garden wasn’t as ideal as I would have liked it to be, and weeds have crept into corners that previously were quite manageable. Some of the things like travel and MS fatigue can’t really be changed, but upon reflection there are things I can attempt to do for a more productive, less weedy and exciting garden journey going forward. After a great deal of thought these are the ideas I’ve come up with:
Maintenance Plan
Firstly, and probably most importantly is to truly understand the maintenance the garden actually needs. It is all very well to create a garden, but if you don’t know what it needs and when it needs it going forward you are going to end up with an out-of-control garden.
So… going forward I’m going to go around the garden with a clip board and write a big giant list of everything I see that needs doing, but I’m also going to take a deep dive and do some research to find out thing like, how often should I be painting wooden structures, what are the actual care needs of the long term plants and what frequency should general maintenance tasks be done to ensure smooth operation. Ideally things should get taken care of before they scream at me demanding much needed action.
Finish Well.
To be fair just finishing a task would sort out a lot of my problems. The unfinished jobs are generally things that needed doing for a reason, to make things easier or in some cases an important part of the garden process like fixing a broken irrigation line or setting up bird protection to protect blue berries. However, for whatever reason the task wasn’t completed, although usually this was due to not enough time in one day.
Sometimes not having all the resources required before starting a job can interrupt the flow enough to have the job set aside – often for weeks, and even until the window of opportunity to do it or the need for it to be done passes and urgency subsides. I have so many stacks of supplies earmarked for loads of different projects that are mostly almost finished.
At this point the tasks get relegated to the ‘I’ll get to it’ list. This list is a mental / visual list that had no structure or timeline and is mainly driven by guilt or the job actually needing to be finished because something unfortunate happened in the garden because the task wasn’t finished.
In the meantime I couldn’t use the automated irrigation and had to hand water… which took more of my time than necessary!
So… I’m going to make a point of finishing all the uncompleted tasks I can find and then going forward, I’m going to make sure all tasks get finished within a sensible time frame of starting. This may mean not unrealistically biting off more than I can chew and breaking tasks down into more manageable mini tasks with manageable timelines rather than a vague ‘I’m going to build something’.
Creating a Closed Loop
Historically I have divided the garden into 5 sectors with sector one taken care on a Monday, sector two taken care of on a Tuesday and so on… When it is working well each sector only needs 20 minutes a day for general care, however I’ve run into problems. I have a busy life beyond the garden, and if I run out of time towards the end of the week the later sectors don’t get their turn and as it is now, when Monday rolls around again, sector one gets its turn again completely missing out the sectors that got missed. So, sector one looks lovely and sector five is a complete mess that requires way more than 20 mins to put it right. I been operating in a linear fashion.
So… I’m going to modify my sector system to make it more of a closed loop. This will also work better with my expanding garden because as it is currently the workload in in each sector was added to each time I created a new garden space to the point it was probably too big. The new system as a closed loop will mean if I don’t get to the Wednesday sector on a Wednesday then I’ll pick up where I left off at the next available opportunity. The other advantage is I can divide the sectors into smaller more manageable sizes although I don’t think I’d want to go much more than eight or ten sectors so things are still taken care of within two-week window which should keep things in control. And I’ll just keep going around and around and nothing will miss their slot in the system.
Another advantage of this will be I should be able to manage the garden myself in small chunks each day so when my handy helpers come we can tackle bigger, more exciting projects and actually make progress in the garden rather than spending time weeding things that should have been weeded earlier and chasing our tails doing work that shouldn’t need doing.
This is a lot to take in and I’m going to have to take care not to over burden myself in getting things into a good place, but I’m really excited about my plan moving forward.
But that’s not all I’ve come up with, but I have whittered on for too long, so I’ve split up my strategies into two stories.
Come again soon – for part two of how I intend to garden better this year.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
Bonus extra
Sometimes the mindless scrolling can come up with something awesome, so I could possibly justify my actions as not being a waste of time. This morning, I saw this dude suggesting turning your goals into a BINGO card to put on the fridge. He suggested mixing big and small tasks to make sure it wasn’t all too hard. I’m currently trying to think of which goals will work best on my Garden BINGO card! What a fun idea. Thanks dude on the internet.
BINGO?! I would say that it sounds silly, . . . but it does not. Finishing well sounds impossible. However, your garden, although likely larger than it looks, is quite contained and ‘neat’. I mean that it is very organized, and generally flat. My difficulty with finishing well is associated with the sort of garden that I work with, which is neither contained nor ‘neat’. I must still prioritize.
I like the bingo because it keeps the goals fresh in mind. Maybe a reward is needed as well as the shout out BINGO!
A garden is never finished and I’m realistic enough to realise it, but getting individual tasks actually completed in a timely manner will be a great help. : o)
Hi Sarah,
Your plans will give you peace of mind and a structure to work to which sounds to me something that will allow you to relax knowing you are in control 😄.
It will certainly be great to get back in control. I’m not in a hurry for things to get this messy again! : o)
I have a question re keeping soil structure friable in my Pukekohe raised beds. The silt loam is good soil but some areas have become compacted. I know no-dig is supposed to be the way to go and have kept adding organic matter every year so think I’m doing things right.
Just wondering at the end of this growing season if I should get stronger family members to double dig the way beds used to be prepped?
Hi Fi. It can get compacted in the hot baking sun. If you don’t want to dig, at then end of the season you could try a cover crop of daikon radish. Its long tap root breaks up soil, but if you leave it in there to breakdown instead of pulling it up it will add organic nutrients deep into the soil, which will increase its water holding capacity. Then after the winter rains when the soil has been rewetted, put a deep mulch on the soil to lock in the moisture and water regularly during the growing season to keep the soil moist. An irrigation system on a timer is a good hands free way to do this. I hope this helps. : o)