Lazy gardening   

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Lazy gardening refers to the use of simple techniques in agriculture or gardening that nonetheless give good results. "Lazy" indicates the reduced workload - however

Lazy gardening is a commonly used term, but it could be easily called "effortless gardening", "efficient gardening" or "no-fuss gardening". It is actually efficient, resilient, real-world gardening, recognizing that most of us have many demands on our time other than gardening, and many things that we could be doing, and there are natural processes which will do much of our gardening work for us. The key is that rather than doing unnecessary work (or planning for work which never gets done, leading to poor results), you get the best results for the effort you put in, through making use of natural processes and wise strategic choices.

Key ingredients include:

• Mulch, to reduce weeding and watering. This needs to be thick enough that weeds can't easily grow through it.
• Easy-to-grow plants, including edible weeds such as dandelions that grow themselves
• No-turn surface composting, or integrated composting (within the bed, like in keyhole gardening[1])
• Efficient use of water

Techniques include:

• The various approaches to urban agriculture (which includes some of the techniques listed here).
• Permanent raised bed (to reduce erosion and allow better drainage)
• Container gardening:
  • Bag gardens
  • Self-watering plant containers
• Vertical gardens - these may take some work to make, but are space efficient and can be easy to maintain.
  • Green wall
  • Pipe garden - made from a PVC pipe filled with soil, with holes for plants, placed vertically.
• square foot gardens,
• keyhole gardens
• Using drip-systems and timers to ensure that water isn't wasted.

There are also many small tricks that make gardening easier. Taken together, they make gardening much less time-consuming and more practical for many people.

[edit] See also

• Beginners permaculture garden
• Balcony gardens
• Self-watering plant containers
• Sub-Irrigated Planter
• Three sisters agriculture

[edit] External links

• No dig garden construction - video on Youtube.

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