Low Effort Gardening

All of what I teach with The Naturalist can pretty much be summed up by the phrase “Low Effort Gardening” or something similar.

Permaculture, Zero Input Agriculture, Adaptive Gardening, Syntropic Ag, and other similar movements tend to overlap quite a bit, and they all attempt to answer the question “how do I create a food system with minimal inputs?”

There have been so many people before me with far more experience who have written extensively about this subject and have absolutely mastered it. A few people whose work I recommend checking out include Ruth Stout, Mark Shepard, Mansanobu Fukuoka, Joseph Lofthouse, Shane Simonsen, Ken Asmus, and Geoff Lawton (I could go on).

While I don’t have anywhere near their level of expertise, I have helped at least a handful of people design low maintenance food systems for their landscapes or farms and (as you know) have spent a lot of time in the wild foraging.

That said, I hope to inspire you and help you understand the underlying design of the world a little bit better today!

Why Low Effort?

While this might seem like a no-brainer, there actually are legitimate reasons to want a low effort garden.

The most common reason I hear is that “I don’t have time for a garden”. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where everyone is extremely busy so reducing the effort required to maintain a garden is absolutely crucial.

For some clients I’ve had, they’re aging. Getting older can be hard for a gardener so the less effort you actually need to spend bending over and doing hard labor the better!

The last reason is because you’re building a food system that will be functional when you’re not even around anymore! One of the oldest food forests in the US is in Pennsylvania. It was created by an old homesteader named John Hershey, and it is still producing thousands of pounds of food all across the town of Downingtown over 100 years later.

This is one of the most soulful reasons in my opinion: to leave a productive and lasting legacy of food for generations to come.

Main Factors

There are a handful of major areas of consideration that relate to how much effort is required of a garden: soil, water, plant selection, and the neglect level.

Soil

Soil is the easiest thing to change about your garden site. It’s always easier on you if you select an area with good soil, but it should comfort you to know that the quality of the soil is flexible!

Soil is simply minerals and organic matter that have decomposed and acts as a medium for roots to live in. This means that any organic material you let decompose will eventually become soil!

So, for the low effort garden (at least in a non-equatorial climate, those can act differently) oftentimes the simplest solution is to mulch the area.

I have written about mulch before, so I won’t get too deep except to note that adding this layer of organic material to the ground can fix a lot of issues facing your soil like nutrient value, soil texture, erosion, and water retention.

Water

This is the big one that everyone asks me about when I consult on a landscape. “Do we need irrigation?” and my answer is always the same: “Well…you don’t need it but it can help”. This is definitely climate dependent.

Some climates may require irrigation even if only for a time to get plants established. In my climate there is more than enough rain for me to not water it except for a few days in the driest part of the season.

Water can be retained through good soil texture, mulch, and living mulch (plants that act as mulch) and if you can make it work without irrigation and the goal is a low-maintenance space, then I recommend watering with rain only.

Plant Selection

The plants you select for your garden can play perhaps one of the biggest roles in how high or low maintenance the garden is.

If you have incredible soil, mulch, and great regular rain but have poor plant selections, you’ll still fail to grow much. On the flip side if you have really bad soil, very little (or no) rainwater, but you make the right selections, then you’ll produce something of value even under the worst conditions!

Plants adapt over time, especially if you grow them from seed and continue to save that seed year after year. This can dramatically reduce your struggles over the course of the next few years! I’ll talk about this more later in the article as well.

My focus tends to be first on herbs and fruit-bearing perennials, then self-seeding annuals and staples.

Strategic Neglect

So, all of the above can be summed up as “If you don’t have to, don’t!”

There’s a natural design to things. The earth is made to regenerate itself and everything was made to adapt over time.

I strongly recommend neglecting your plants instead of babying them. Coddling only makes them weaker and more dependent on you which in turn means you will need to put in more effort over time.

Practical tips

We’ve addressed basic knowledge you’ll need to begin this concept, so now we’ll get into specific tips and guidelines to follow for the average site.

*Please note that every climate has exceptions, so follow the 12 principles to suit your specific site.

Site Prep 

I’m considering starting another garden soon, so this is on my mind.

For many of you, your site will be in a lawn somewhere. My first order of business is to kill the grass and loosen the soil.

I think tilling as a regular practice does more harm than good and adds a lot of annual labor to your garden so I would generally say don’t.

That said if there’s not much life in the soil anyway and it’s compacted, I may as well till one single time and then never have too again.

After tilling I would immediately put down some kind of biodegradable barrier. I’ve used cardboard before (although I understand some people prefer not to) but you can also use wet leaves since they mat down nice. The goal of this is just to keep any weeds from popping up in the short term so you can get things established before that layer breaks down.

Next, I’d put a new layer of compost or some kind of soil medium down. It doesn’t have to be super nutrient dense; it just has to act as a clean slate for your plants to grow in without too much initial struggle.

Finally, I would mulch the entire thing.

Put down shredded leaves, woodchips, grass clippings (which actually make a great mulch I’ve discovered) or whatever as long as it’s organic material.

Some people mulch with sheep’s wool and supposedly it works great! This is the layer that will slowly release nutrients into the soil and save you vast amounts of water over time.

While you can add some fertilizer if you like, I try to stay away from anything synthetic. I have this article all about »fertilization« in the backlog for your reference.

Herbs

Herbs are not only something that immediately adds joy to a meal, they’re also incredibly easy to grow for the most part (ok not every herb, but most of the standard ones!)

I definitely recommend getting these started early since they’re an easy win.

Staples

The next thing I think about is which vegetables are going to be major staples in my meals? If I won’t eat much celery but I can use potatoes in everything, then potatoes are the obvious choice.

Some staples might not be worth growing yourself though unless you have serious concerns about the safety of store-bought ones (valid).

Sweet potatoes, garlic, perennial onions, and leafy greens are some of our biggest staples in terms of what my family eats regularly.

Fruit/Nuts

While this isn’t a quick win, it’s something I would plant as early as possible since they mature over a long time horizon.

The thing about fruits and nuts is that they are generally some of the lowest effort crops you can grow! Really any perennials will be the best long-term plan, but fruits will always get eaten, and nuts make great staples if people are willing to shift their diets.

Annuals

While there’s nothing wrong with growing annual crops (I personally grow tomatoes and beans) you’ll want to limit them to mostly self-sowing annuals, so you don’t have to put in much effort.

Sometimes growing some annuals can be part of your regeneration plan for cycling nutrients back into the soil. For example, I’ve grown beans in an area specifically to add nitrogen into the soil where it was deficient.

As long as you have a perennial dominant system, you’ll be in good shape and have far less maintenance than the traditional garden!

Landraces

This is one of those tips that will change the way you see the garden forever.

Most people buy seedlings from the store and plant them in the garden. I would strongly recommend that if you buy seedlings, buy them locally from someone who grows them from seed or (preferably) grow them from seed yourself.

I have a whole article on seeds and why this is so important but to sum it up, seeds adapt to the conditions they read when they first sprout. This mechanism allows them to form pest and disease resistance, drought tolerance, and what kind of soil it can tolerate being in.

When you take many genetic strains of seeds and intentionally select them to adapt to your site, this is called “landracing”.

This is the ultimate form of low-input gardening (often called “adaptive gardening”) where you essentially breed the plants you want on the land, so they need the least amount of babying possible!

There are specific details you’ll want to know for different crops, but that’s a good enough overview for our purposes.

If you’re interested in landrace gardening, I recommend reading the book Landrace Gardening by Joseph Lofthouse where you can find all of the details you’d want to know to start!

*I don’t earn anything by linking his book, I’m just a really big fan of it!

Hopefully that gave you something you can apply to your own garden. If you have any questions or want to chat, I always respond to messages on either Facebook or Instagram!

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