plus a 2023 Midsummer Garden Tour

The garden is growing fast these days. So fast, that the plants seem to be stretching before my eyes. I can barely blink without noticing new growth. Each week since Beltane I’ve strolled the rows at sunset, snapping shots here and there of new sprouts and blooms unfurling. Despite my best intentions of sharing these verdant delights with you (along with tidbits of green-thumb wisdom) it’s taken me until now, midsummer, to get it together for a garden update. Please excuse my tardiness. It seems that each time I’ve drafted a blog post, something urgent has popped up and then the moment to share has passed. Such is life, and so we move on. Nature has a timeline it sticks to whether we’re prepared or not.

In my defense, a cool wet Spring lingered later than usual this year and it’s only until now that the garden has started showing her 2023 form. This summer marks year 3 growing on this land which makes the kitchen garden, meadow and orchard still very young. Regardless of it’s age, everything is getting on quite well and becoming much less weekly maintenance. All-in-all I spend about 1 hour per week weeding, watering and fertilizing, plus another 1 hour per week harvesting, deadheading, and mowing around the perimeter. The rest of my garden-time consists of strolling the land in the morn’ and evenin’ with either a coffee or glass of wine in hand - depending on the time of day. I also spend ample time simply enjoying the sights and sounds while I sit on a swing under the tree near the workshop. Two hours of work per week is an amazing pay-off for such a large garden.

How in the world is that possible? Allow me to dish the dirt on how I keep my 4,000 square foot garden, meadow, and orchard low maintenance.

5 ways to keep a garden low maintenance

Water Deeply 1x per week
Kitchen garden plants thrive best when they receive a deep drink of water about once every 7-10 days, depending on the temperatures, wind exposure, and precipitation. Water should travel through the soil, downward as deeply as possible, to encourage healthy root growth. Plants also need a chance for their root systems to dry out slightly been waterings otherwise they’ll rot. Overwatering is the most common way to kill plants and it’s the quickest way to cause disease. A diseased plant is much more susceptible to getting infested by pests. If temperatures are extremely hot, dry, and windy, then plants will likely need a little boost of water every few days during that spell. Watering deeply at this 7-10 day frequency optimizes plant health and significantly reduces the chances of my plants catching a disease. This saves me time, work, and money because I don’t have to tend sickly plants.
Mulch
Mulching has many benefits, including suppressing weeds, retaining soil moisture, and feeding soil as it breaks down overtime. My garden rows are lightly mulched with a compost and fine bark mulch blend. My fruit trees and the hugelkulture berm are mulched with Redwoood bark mulch. This upfront cost from 3 years ago save me from an incredible amount of time and work weeding. It also reduces the amount of time I’d otherwise need to spend watering the garden and orchard in addition to saving water.
Replace grass with a clover cover crop
When I installed the kitchen garden and orchard, I sowed white dutch clover seeds, a cover crop, around the perimeter of the area and in the garden rows. I have flood-style irrigation in my garden, so sowing clover in the flood furrows/walkways was an untraditional move. However, I’m so glad I made that choice because it’s proving to have many benefits for the garden and my workload. In addition to serving as a “living, nitrogen-fixing, fertilizer”, also acts as a living mulch. The clover completely blocks weeds (which saves me countless hours of work), prevents soil erosion during watering (which means I don’t have to re-dig my furrows every year), and it reduces tracking dirt everywhere. The clover shades the root systems of my plants which reduces water evaporation and keeps plants cooler during hot spells (which saves me from watering more often and dealing with struggling plants). Additionally the clover blooms attract pollinators, which means all of my plants are well pollinated thereby increasing my yield. This variety of clover is a low-growing perennial. I only have to mow the orchard and perimeter of the kitchen garden once every other week. On that same day, I use a sickle tool to cut down the edges of the clover growing in the pathways so it doesn’t crowd my crops.
Grow flowers in a meadow for pest control & pollinator support
Installing a native wildflower meadow has been one my best decisions to date. It’s a large piece of my land that it now totally wild and hands-off. There is virtually zero maintenance apart from pulling a few random weeds and supplemental watering on occasion. Other than that, it thrives in my native soil with natural precipitation. In addition to it’s glorious appearance, it’s a pollinator way station and major support for wildlife! The meadow attracts pollinators, preditatory insects, and birds, all of which help the kitchen garden and orchard thrive. The meadow is my pest control. Birds that visit the meadow to feed on wildflower seeds also snack on pests in the garden, such as weevils, squash bugs, mites, aphids, caterpillars and grasshoppers. Beneficial insects such as lady bugs, lacewing, spiders, and praying mantis make the meadow their home and feast on pests that attack my plants. Pollinators and my honey bees leave no flower un-suckled, ensuring I have the best harvest possible. All of this keeps my garden ecosystem in balance, naturally, which means I don’t have spend time, money, or work dealing with pest infestations.
Plant Perennials for biodiversity
Lastly, this entire 4,000 + sq ft garden area is filled with immense biodiversity! This helps maintain a self-balancing ecosystem that requires minimal intervention by human hands. Different plants and flowers take up different amounts of nutrients from the soil while other plants add nutrients back into the soil. Plants also attract different insects and wildlife species which ultimately support the balance of the whole. In healthy landscapes anywhere on earth, there is a give and take exchange happening between each living thing. The more diverse the group, the healthy it functions as whole. Growing a mono-crop or a low-diverse garden is the quickest and easiest way to create a lot of problems for the land and the gardener alike. Additionally, I’ve planted as many perennial crops, flowers, and herbs as possible in order to ensure returning abundance year after year, without the need to buy and plant every year. Only about 2/3rds of my kitchen garden rows grow annual vegetable crops, such as corn, tomato, pumpkin, lettuce, brocoli, cabbage, garlic, onion, potato, carrots, and peppers. The rest of my plants are perennial fruits, veggies, and herbs, such as blackberry, raspberry, cherry, peach, apple, artichoke, strawberry, rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, hyssop, feverfew, chamomile, and many more.

Scenes from a Midsummer Garden

In the midsummer garden, the plants are beginning to fruit. I had the loveliest strawberry and garlic scape harvest on the Full Strawberry Moon. As with most home-grown goodies, the flavor is incomparable to market produce. The peaches and apples are thickening up after an early June fruit-thinning. (Thinning fruit trees to 1 fruit every six inches helps the tree produces high quality fruit every single year. It also prevents young branches from breaking due to the weight of the fruit.) I cannot wait to harvest my first year from this young orchard! The brambles are forming and growing crazy! I can’t wait for blackberry stained fingers in August. The curcurabits and nightshades are also showing young green fruits that will swell with hot summer sun. I’m growing heirloom and sunburst cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, red-skinned potatoes, and 5 different varieties of sweet & spicy peppers. I see salsa canning in my future. The peas are in harvest right now, and the green beans and cucumbers are setting. The green beans have the loveliest crimson colored blooms. I’m also growing pumpkins for pie and carving, along with spaghetti squash and yellow crookneck squash. Lettuce, carrots, beets, and spinach are ready for harvest this week. In the next few weeks I expect to harvest my garlic and onion bulbs, too. The corn is rather small, but I’m sure it will shoot tall with hot temperatures approaching. I’m pleased to share that I’ve been harvesting fresh culinary herbs daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner - that will never get old. And lastly, the meadow is a blaze with a plethora gorgeous blooms.