Do less summer work

Bonus content for How to save the world with plants #05 by @cast-iron-garden.bsky.social

Before we get into the garden-specific summer advice, I implore you to follow public health advisories about heat exhaustion, dangerous wet bulb temperatures, and air quality.

Let’s talk about ways to do less work in the garden in summer. Please send me more ideas, and if and how you want credit if you’d like it posted here.

One piece at a time

You don’t have to do everything at once. It seems obvious now that I was given the idea, by reading KC Davis’ How to Keep House While Drowning about cleaning the house. She points out, rightly, that there’s no law you have to have the whole house clean at once, when your goal is simply hygiene. You can rotate through what sections get cleaned and are at peak clean. This has made a huge difference for me with an energy-limited disability. It’s okay for me to mop just the entry way one day, and a hall the next. You can do the same with weeding or planting or building! Examples:

  • It’s okay to plant just a single plant every few days even if you have more to go.
  • Not all the weeding has to be done at once.
  • Sometimes I’ll set out my materials and tools on different days, especially if the tools involve any sort of prep work (raking the grass and sharpening the scythe before scything, stringing the weed-eater, refilling gas in a mower, and so forth.)

Make less work

  • Automate if you can - drip systems, soaker hose (I’m finding ours annoying to repair after a number of years, so I may try drip next time for better aim to vegetable plants), and battery- or solar-powered timers for water are your friends.
  • Only put plants that can take drying out into pots so they can survive if you miss a day or three. I will put some links and list here as I make more profiles for them.
    • Cacti, and we have lots of cool native ones (page in progress)
    • Plants that naturally live in shallow rocky soils, like Hedeoma sp (I’ve not seen them for sale before, but I have seeds and can send locally if interested)
  • Bigger pots need watered less often (once a day versus twice). Even for seedlings, I’ve moved almost completely to long self-watering planters so that one day missed does not mean something dies.

Delay until better conditions!

  • Night person? Garden after dark, with a head lamp. Morning person? Lucky you! Get up as early as you can (and get a headlamp if you are early enough!)
  • Plant native perennial flowers, grasses, and trees in fall (when it’s still warm and plants are growing, but it gets cooler gradually) to winter (November to March). Once it’s winter and they’re dormant, you don’t have to water them except at planting, reducing stress on both you and the plants. If you fall to temptation and buy more plants mid-summer, you can often pot them up in a shady area together so that you can delay. Even a sun-loving dry-habitat plant will often be fine for a month or two in the shade as long as you don’t let their roots rot in standing water.
  • Do you really need to build a new garden path right now, when it’s so hot? No, no you don’t. (This is a note to myself, really.)
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