(Photo: Box bed with diverse vegetables and flowers combined)
Labour Saving Odds and Ends
Biodiversity, bug hotels, & bug restaurants to reduce time spent in bug battles
Attract and keep helpful pollinators and predatory insects. Avoid large sections of one kind of plant; monocultures attract swarms of harmful bugs and they will build homes in the neighbourhood to be near their groceries. Fragrant flowers and herbs interplanted in rows & containers will offer diverse bug food supplies, and confuse harmful bugs – consider planting flowers or adding containers in or near your plots, raised beds, and box beds. Bugs hunt by smell and colour. Yellow is popular for daytime (many flowers feature some yellow) and white for night — white is more easily seen in the dark, and white flowers tend to have stronger fragrances for night time pollinators and predators.
Note: plants have a fragrance even before setting blooms (e.g., fragrant herbs, tomatoes). If you plant it, bugs will come!
Tip: sick or stressed plants actually attract many more harmful insects – nature’s necessary janitorial service.
Delayed & Companion Planting
Another strategy to reduce time and effort battling bugs is delayed planting, which avoids the bug rush depending on the life cycle of specific bugs (e.g., Colorado potato beetle is active May to early July so plant potatoes in mid June to miss the adults that are foraging and egg laying). Companion planting can discourage the hurtful bugs (e.g., strong scented herbs and flowers hide the smell of your veg.) and encourage predator insects (e.g., bugs that eat bugs are attracted to flowering borage, coriander, dill, lavender, mint, thyme, zinnias, yarrow…).
Being pro-active instead of re-active can save both time and effort later
Aerate (loosen) garden soil, potting mixes, and compost piles for water and air penetration; trim all foliage for air circulation to reduce fungal problems; do not wet leaves when watering to avoid airborne fungal, bacterial, and viral problems; keep lower leaves from kissing the soil to avoid soil borne diseases, creepy crawlers, and slimy sliders; and cover bare soil (mulching) to keep soil splash from reaching lower leaves, to suppress weeds, conserve moisture and add value to the soil. These actions will reduce problems and the time spent addressing them.
Install early, reusable insect and critter barriers
(Photo: Hoop nets to discourage critters — Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh, Scotland)
To avoid damage to vegetables, leaves, seeds, bulbs, flowers, and berries install early, reusable insect and critter barriers . We have found that reusable barriers (e.g., row covers, plastic netting, chicken wire, hardware cloth, poly tunnels, aluminum foil, egg shells, etc.) are the best and most reliable deterrents against all insects and critters (e.g., deer, skunks, raccoons, voles, mice, rats, dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, chipmunks, groundhogs, and squirrels… we have had them all!). All other methods – we experimented with many – are time consuming and labour intensive, not to mention the $’s involved.
Fall garden stubble
Fall garden stubble left until spring will shelter predator insects & pollinators over winter – like natural bug hotels. They will contribute to the biological controls that help you battle the hurtful bugs and reduce your time with battle gear.
Re-positioning for best Sun
(Photo: Chaise lounge used as a sun bus)
If you have a number of portable containers, you might consider a sun bus (e.g., wagon, wheelbarrow, dolly, wheeled chaise…) to move many of your plants all at once into the shifting spring and fall sun (or away from frost) to save time and effort moving them one by one!
Compost/composted manure
(Photo: Compost being screened through hardware cloth)
(4 cm/1.58 inches – no need to rake-in) applied in fall to plots and large containers and then covered (mulch for plots; tarp for containers) lets nature do the work of mixing & amending soil instead of you. Compost will replace nutrients plants have taken from the soil, retain moisture, add structure to the soil (more friable), helps fight disease, and balances pH. What’s not to love?
Fall Shredded leaves & garden debris
Shredded leaves, grass clippings, & garden debris (soft parts of plants you cut & drop) spread as a mulch on a plot, raised bed, or box bed, add nitrogen, carbon, and many trace nutrients; reduce erosion; and discourage cat toileting and squirrel gardening. Worms will take it down for you! This is particularly helpful if you are unable to compost. However, leave some bare soil in spots as some helpful bugs (e.g., squash bees) will nest in the soil (e.g., small hole, only as round as a pencil).
Dibbers Make Holes in Soil
(Photo: our standup dibber marked in inches, 1 – 6, 2″ onions, 3″ garlic, 6″ leeks)
(Photo: Leek seedlings dropped into a dibber hole – let nature fill it in!)
A shovel handle, minus the shovel end, marked in inches from 1 to 6 makes an excellent stand-up dibber for onion sets, garlic, and leeks. Aerate/loosen soil with a claw, add moisture if the soil is dry, plunge in the dibber to the appropriate depth — 2 inches for onions, 3 inches for garlic, and 6-inches/15 cm, for leeks — twist the handle to withdraw, and move on. Place the onion or garlic in the hole, backfill and firm the soil. Leeks are even easier: drop the leek seedlings into dibber holes and let rain and your watering efforts back-fill transplant holes to save frequent hilling. Do not backfill leek holes with soil.
A standup dibber saves crawling around on hands and knees to plant, and speeds up the whole process for all three plantings. We have used this method successfully for many years now.
Tools
(Photo: Two trowels one metal alloy, rusting, and the other rust free stainless steel)
Stainless steel tools will save you a lot of time in tool care. They are not hurt if forgotten in the rain, and cleaning by water or dry brush is easy. They do not hold a sharp edge quite as well as some other metals like high carbon steel; however, they do not rust like high carbon steel, which saves time in wire brushing, sanding, sharpening, and then lightly oiling weathered tools.
Gardening is more enjoyable if uncomplicated and streamlined! Where possible, be pro-active to save time and effort so you have fewer worries and more time to enjoy your garden. Grow a mix of food and flowers, or grow an edible green screen to distract you and your guests from less interesting sights!
Happy Gardening!
