so how much tiem does this gardening actually take

[Zoe Girl]

I am just interested in this realistically. I did have a garden last summer and I didnt take really good care of it, we had some trauma around that time as well. I really want a larger garden here in Colorado but I just wonder about being able to do it. A garden here means often watering daily and the soil is literally concrete. I think I tend to lose track of things and then the garden falters. I got a lot of zuchinni and some nice tomatoes last year, my pumpkins totally failed however and i was counting on them (aren't you glad we still have grocery stores!).

So any hints for a lazy gardener in the high desert

[iris lily]

Most people around here are uber excited in May and June, but by the unrelenting heat of late July - September, they are indifferent to their garden.

If you can keep some tomatoes going as an indifferent gardener, that's pretty good.Aim low, start simple.

[Rosemary]

use a soaker hose to cut down on watering.
dig a recessed garden instead of using a raised bed. remove some of the desert clay and add a lot of compost.
rig up a means of providing shade during the hottest part of summer.

i grew vegetables in Phoenix & Tucson, so I've had some experience w/desert gardening. I never had to water daily using these methods.

[Dhiana]

It does take a lot of time and effort to grow your own food. There really is nothing simple about it other than the results being a purely simple ingredient :)

My solution is to grow foods that provide the greatest reduction in our grocery bill. For me it is bell peppers which I'm growing from seeds of other bell peppers I've purchased. At 298yen per small pepper means it's about US$3.30 each. ouch!

Try growing things you can't get if you neglect them or otherwise expensive things. There was no real motivation for you to care for the pumpkins you grow because you could just get it from the nearest grocer.

I'd love to grow some baby spinach this spring. The Japanese style is just not very good for fresh salads.
Last summer I grew one pepper plant that provided 13 small peppers :) My success in growing that single plant tasted so very, very yummy!

[Blackdog Lin]

You might consider container gardening - that's what I would do in your situation. A 5-gallon bucket will grow a decent tomato plant. Scavenge around for buckets or other large suitable containers, find a source of some good composted garden soil to fill them with, and voila! You could do as few or as many as you felt able to take care of, and pick what crops/veggies are your favorites for having home-grown.

We have a largish garden, but grew our first ever Brussels sprouts in big patio pots last year. They did well, and grew enough for several meals.

[Rosemary]

I had thought about containers, too. In desert sun, though, it's important that they are in a location with late afternoon shade. When I was a grad student I obtained some tree-sized pots - 15-30 gallon - for growing vegetables, from a local nursery (I had to pay for them, but they were much less costly than pots from the hardware store of similar size).

[puglogic]

The four things that helped me grow more things even though I was overworked and depressed and distracted, and Colorado's notoriously harsh on gardens:

1) Amend your concrete soil down to 12" or so where you're going to grow. Put a few inches of organic matter (compost, decomposed manure, etc.) on top and then dig it down, mixing it in, so the plant roots have somewhere nourishing to live. A good physical workout, feels great. Water it deeply, deeply before you plant.

2) When you plant your plants, lay down soaker hoses all around them within a couple of inches of the plants. These are cheap at Home Depot.

3) Attach a garden hose to your soaker hose. Where the garden hose meets the house, get a cheap timer (again, at Home Depot) that allows you to set, for example, 60 minutes of watering every other day. You want the water to go very deep, but infrequently, to teach the plant roots to dig down deep in search of water, strengthening the plant. Then you can forget sometimes, and it won't matter.

4) Put a heavy layer of mulch (I use straw, cheap) over the soil and soaker hose, all around the plants. I put 4" - 8". This keeps the moisture in despite hot sun and drying winds and possible neglect.

5) Make a date with yourself for a couple of times a week to go out and check on things, look for bug infestations, make sure everything's getting watered well, etc. Make sure you do this - don't space it or think you don't need to. At the very least, take a cool drink and a lawn chair out, and sit with your plants for a peaceful meditation.

You can grow a lot of things with not a ton of effort this way, if you think you just want to do the minimum but still have something to show for it. In gardening, the more effort you're willing to expend, oftentimes the bigger your crop. Well worth it, when you look at the prices for organic produce.

If you have specific questions, take advantage of the Colorado Master Gardeners question/answer help line in Denver: Denver CMG Help Line: 720-913-5278

Good luck!

[redfox]

Pug pretty much nailed it. The better your soil, the less time maintenance takes. Building good soil out of bad -- i.e., concrete; been there! -- takes assiduous work over years. Or spending a bunch of $$ for hauled in soil & compost. Or containers! They are a brilliant solution in many circumstances, as others have said.

You will need to water them 2X daily without fail in hot weather. The roots have no options to go deeper to find water as plants in the ground do. I love watering my containers... it's meditative.

[ctg492]

Gardening is a labor of love, not measured by time imo. I spend so much time watering, wandering and looking at my flowers, I stare at the bees in the mint, I have a rock I sit on in the afternoon. So much so the neighbors make comments about how much time I spend in the flowers. Last fall I put in my veggie garden plot as it was time since we have been here three years. I hope I can spend every day in the dirt. So time yes it takes time.

[Zoe Girl]

Okay I think I will try the soaker hoses under some mulch this year. I will do a huge chunk of the work in starting by digging very deep and working in soil and compost. That part I will do when I have more energy and excitement at the beginning of the season. I am definitely using the mulch and soaker hoses to keep the stress of daily watering a little under control. I know last year another issue was that I used flimsy tomato cages and then everything fell over, so good supports will be necessary also!

The idea is to enjoy it. Last year I had too many traumas in life and I really tried to do what the landlord wanted (bring the grass back). This year I am more realistic, the landlord and my kids all want a lovely lawn but the soil is so beat up that I won't hold high expectations. However having an extensive garden will build up the soil nicely ( I plan on being here at least 3 more years) and maybe someday they can grass again. I am going to finally splurge on a little bistro table set with 2 chairs for my morning tea over the summer also and put that near the garden.

[awakenedsoul]

Growing food does take time and daily care. I had a big crop of Cinderella pumpkins last year. They needed heavy feeding, lots of water, and plenty of mulch. There were a couple other years where I didn't have success with pumpkins. I always grow the easy things like zucchini, herbs, and wildflowers. Feeding once a week with compost tea makes a big difference. I also weed each morning. That way it's not such a big job. It takes a couple of seasons for the soil to really become rich and fertile. Enjoy your bistro table set. It sounds like a nice splurge!

[fidgiegirl]

ZG, I enjoyed the book The Urban Homestead. http://www.rootsimple.com/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/ Lots of good advice and cheap ways to do things like self-watering containers. I have tried to go the way pug advises. This year will be a huge focus on soil at our house and at our brand new, never worked community garden plot. Bring on the organics!!

[goldensmom]

Gardening is a labor of love, not measured by time

That's been my experience as well. I was forced to work in the garden as a child and hated it but now I do it because I want to. I can get lost in time working my vegetable and flower gardens. Some years they do well other years they don't do so well. Last year I decided not to do a vegetable garden because it is soooo much work but this year I'm in the planning stage again. Even though it is a lot of work, last year I missed the satisfaction and serenity gardening brings to me. Lot of work, lots of time, lots of dirt but well worth it however you decide to do it..

[Gregg]

If you use containers make sure they are as big as possible/practical. Small containers on hot days in the dryness of the front range will probably need water twice a day. That's a pain in itself, but then if you go anywhere for a weekend you would have to drag them all to a shady spot, soak them good and maybe even enlist a neighbor to wet them down again before you get home.

One year I thought I was being clever and filled the bottom of large pots with milk jugs and other plastic bottles so I would have to buy less potting soil. It was cheaper, but I only had half as much soil to hold water. This was also in CO, btw. Big mistake. Cut my soil expense in half, but doubled my watering labor.

[awakenedsoul]

I have a nice neighbor who gives me as much free horse manure as I want. I give her fruits and vegetables. I've noticed that with the manure in my compost pile, my yields have doubled! I use it for compost tea, too. If you can get some, it's really worth it. Compost is like magic! I also use all of my leaves in the fall to mulch my citrus trees. It breaks down by summer, keeps the weeds down, and really does a good job of providing nutrients to the fruit trees.

[puglogic]

There are several locations in the Denver area where you can get soil amendments for free, by the way. Many places with horses, small farms all around, breweries have brewery waste (spent grain), coffee shops give away tons of grounds, etc. I have a collection of scavenged 5-gallon buckets I usually have in my little truck to score things like that :-) The more you amend your soil, the more it becomes like a sponge that stores water in the organic matter, the less critical it is to water every day, especially with deep mulch. Straw bales are about $6.00 and will cover a lot of ground. We grew about 200 pounds of produce on a pretty standard sized lot a couple of years ago. Some went into the freezer and we ate it all winter.....saved a TON of money.

[Zoe Girl]

Oooh thank you Pug, I will look for whatever free soil ammendments I can find. I am also working with Genver Urban Gardens through work to create a garden club (the school I work at has a great garden) so that is another resource. I like the price range of free.

[Miss Cellane]

Not hints at all for the climate, as I've only ever gardened in New England.

What I can say is that you have to balance your time and energy spent on the garden with the time and energy needed for other things in your life. My dad always had a huge vegetable garden. He'd head out every evening after work to weed and hoe and putter around. He loved gardening. He loved harvesting. He loved eating the food he grew with his own hands. And most evenings, I'd be out there with him, weeding away, learning how to care for tomato plants, learning all about the compost pile.

As an adult, it took me some years to realize that I don't like gardening as much as Dad did. What I loved was spending time out there with him. I've had a few gardens in my time and most of them were a raggedy mess by the end of July.

So I decided that gardening on a large scale simply isn't for me. I have downsized considerably. A few tomato plants, some lettuce and bell peppers. Grow your own salad. This takes all the time I am willing to give to a garden, and tastes good, too.

Instead of having a garden, I shop at farmers' markets and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor. A cousin of mine has tons of strawberry, raspberry and blueberry plants--an entire field of them. For half a day of picking of whatever's currently ripe, she'll send me home with quarts and quarts for the freezer or jam. Sometimes I "babysit" friends' gardens when they are on vacation. I take care of the garden and get to pick anything that ripens while I'm in charge. And, oddly, I am never short of zucchini in zucchini season, once I let it be known that I wouldn't mind taking the extras off friends' hands.


It's a wonderful thing to grow your own food. But when it becomes a huge chore that sits there at the end of your day, sucking all your enjoyment of life, then it's time to evaluate what the costs of the garden are, versus what you are getting from it. The answer to that is going to be different for everyone.

[Zoe Girl]

Yes, the huge chore that sucks the fun out is what I am trying to avoid. I thought I would take a month off during summer but it looks like just one week with myfamily for vacation after all. I could still take the month however I get paid extra duty and it is very important to my budget. I am not even sure what my schedule will be like and if I will get my lazy mornings where I don't get to work until 8:30. A lot of these ideas will help me set it up for lowest maintenance so I can enjoy more and do less maintenance.

[Gardenarian]

My thought is, I enjoy watering! It's not like you're out there double-digging. I love it when hummingbirds come and try to drink from the spray. It's a very peaceful, rewarding kind of activity.

If you are renting, I would go with containers rather than trying to do a raised bed. You can grow stuff in cardboard boxes if you want; it doesn't have to get complicated.

[Tussiemussies]

We had put in a timer for water and hooked it up to a hose then a watering sprinkler, it was a certain type, I am not sure but I will ask my husband. We timed it for the length of time we wanted the garden watered and that took care of that chore. DH did did under the grass and put the hose in there so it wasn't unsightly. The hardest part is the weeding!

Just a hint, I have always planted a large border of marigolds around the garden and have never had a problem with bugs etc.

Good luck. Hope your garden is a success this year...