Gardening is very important in my life to give me time to meditate and unwind. The places where I worry about efficiencies have to do with working around my physical limitations of doing heavy labor such as lifting and digging hard soil or very large shrubs and trees. But I don't worry about the time factor so much, even though I work, when I'm doing lighter garden tasks that I enjoy such as pruning and weeding.

This possibility of being alone, with busy hands and mental freedom, is to me one of the greatest charms of gardening.

I certainly agree with this thought. Since I am now half-time retired, I have more time for such enjoyments.

My main efficiency move is to use a slow-release fertilizer in late May or early June. That way I don't need to spend all summer doing monthly feedings. It's far too hot here by mid-summer anyway--I don't enjoy garden tasks in such weather. For the first spring feeding, I use an organic food plus alfafa and manure, and I may or may not repeat the alfafa and manure a month later when I start using the slow-release fertilizer--depends on how ambitious I feel. Occasionally, as autumn approaches, I may give an extra feeding of a short-term fertilizer if the plants are looking too wimpy, but that is optional too.

As for the weeding stuff, I spent several years deep-digging all my beds (a small section at a time)--got out all those deep-growing weed roots. It was worth the time and effort because now my weeds are all "new" weeds that haven't really settled in. As a result, it is very easy to pull them up. I should add that I mulch heavily--a big task in the spring--but between the deep-digging and the heavy mulch, weeds just aren't that big a problem in my garden.

One reason I never got into the regular spraying routine is that I'm too lazy for all that work. By carefully selecting disease-resistant roses and just spraying a couple times in the spring and then a couple times in the fall, I find that my roses get along fine even though my neighbor's and friend's roses are suffering badly from blackspot.

Nothing very original about my "efficiency" methods, but I'm always ready to consider time-saving methods as long as the roses don't suffer.

OF course, I think you grow more roses than I do (around 60). Lots of roses can be a problem in and of itself, can't it!

Kate

My struggle for efficiency seems to center on getting everything I need (organic foods, tools, buckets, water, amendments, et al) to the site where I'm working. Mind you, I have a very small yard, but even so it seems I am always making endless trips for something I forgot to bring from the shed (worse when I'm working in the front yard since the shed is in the back.) I have a flatbed wagon that I load up, but it doesn't seem to hold enough (!), a compartmentalized bucket for carrying 2 organic products which works well at planting, but it seems when I'm fertilizing I can't carry (or simply underestimate) the amount of stuff needed to eliminate a second (and a third) trip. After planting more than 75 roses you'd think I'd have the list of needed items memorized. But invariably I forget stuff. It's frustrating and, I think, causes great inefficiency. Oh, you were asking for "efficient methods" not "inefficient struggles", weren't you, Melissa. Well, I have worked hard to become more methodical in PREPARING for the task at hand which is major for me since I feel my personality is as haphazard as can be. But I'm better than I used to be.

Here's a link that could be helpful with your Bermuda/weed problem. I'm sure it's not new to you. I wonder if you've even already tried it and what were your results. Pulling Bermuda grass seems to me to be THE MOST inefficient task a gardener could face. There must be a better way of eradication.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: Solarization

With all my health problems my work in the garden is very limited---most of my roses are now "survival of the fittest"---My garden would never be on a garden tour but I do love the beauty and fragrance of my neglected roses.

I sure do love to come to the forum and enjoy all the beauty.
Florence

*** but I do love the beauty and fragrance of my neglected roses.

Florence, you give me hope that my rose garden will survive the time when I can not devote so much attention to it - which, of course, will happen someday. And not just survive but be beautiful. Thank you!

Sherry

Housework i am efficient with. Gardening not so much. Unimaginable really, like being efficient with prayer or meditation....which pretty much explains the state of my garden, now that i think about it ; )

I am very efficient when I am working in someone else's garden: organized, placement planned, tools at hand, the order of tasks. In my own garden, it falls to pieces. I make a million rips to the shed, spend hours wandering about deciding where a plant should go. Weeding puts me straight into fantasy land. I hate it if someone interrupts me while I'm weeding. And I always get sidetracked: gardening by association: A leads to B leads to C. I go to plant a rose by the lilac bush, but the bed first needs weeding so go get a weed bag and since I'm here I should prune the lilac and cut out the dead wood, so go get pruning saw and on the way back I might as well take the dead limb out of the smoke tree, haul that to the compost and pull the tall weeds around oaks and then notice the roses on the fence are dry (too far from the irrigation system) so I water them...

My garden is for gardening. I remember a quiz in a gardening magazine that enumerated all the possible purposes of one's garden, such as entertaining, food production, space for children to play, etc, but not gardening which is what I use my garden for. So far I've done nothing to be more efficient but I know I shall have to as I grow older. Now I use my garden to relax after work and weeding is my best way of relaxing. I will never hire somebody to help with the garden but if I find that I can't cope with all of it one day, I will make the garden area smaller and let the rest go wild.

Melissa, most of my gardening is done from October through April. After that I just water. Because I work, I start my pruning earlier than most in this area, always leaving the hardest for last. After I prune, I weed and mulch. I rethink the garden every year, so changes are made, eliminations, additions. this year I ordered no bulbs. I want to start assessing more and buying less.

I'm not the most efficient or organized person. Constantly walking back to get something is good for the waistline, so I don't care about that. I do like the zen of pruning and weeding and I love contemplating. I tell my friends who meditate, that gardening clears my mind. It is a natural high.

Good luck with the Bermuda grass, the more you pull, the more it grows and i still pull.

Carol

What a lot of felt and thought answers; I'm glad so many gardeners wrote their ideas, and responded to mine. Sometimes I post these things wondering if what I'm saying is so obvious, so universally understood, that everyone will ask themselves why I on earth I bothered to put it into words.

Sherry, I came up with that idea myself this last summer, using it on wild strawberry, which if anything is worse than Bermuda grass. Actually I doubt it would work better than what I'm already doing. (for Carol too) I have years of experience with Bermuda grass, and have come to the conclusion that it is possible to greatly reduce it, if not eliminate it entirely, by weeding, mulching heavily, weeding again, mulching again. After a few years you eliminate perhaps 75% or 90% of the Bermuda grass, and what's left is dealt with much more quickly. Also the plants you plant there help shade it out. The mulch is essential. It deprives the grass of light and softens the ground so that the roots are easier to pull; and the grass tends to send its runners through the mulch so you can remove them easily. Bermuda grass roots very deeply, so the plastic cover wouldn't kill all the roots, and you can't use it in beds that are already planted. I'm in a very optimistic, or perhaps slightly manic, mood this fall and have started a campaign to kill all the Bermuda grass in the garden. I think it can be done.

Marianne, I was thinking about posting a question for you. Are you having a real autumn this year too? It's such a relief to have wet and chill!

When I think about it, I believe that only a small part of the satisfaction of gardening comes from enjoying the finished product, no matter how lovely. After all, how many gardeners would want their perfect garden to appear in an instant, by magic?

Mauirose said it best of all.

Melissa

Great thread Melissa (again). Efficient I am not. I am stricken with "senior" moments on a regular basis when I'm headed out to do work. I know I intended to go out and dead head. I have my clippers in hand, get out to the space...then it seems I get distracted by having to tie up this cane that's blowing around, which leads to tying up 3 more...which leads to perhaps thinking about what to do with this rose who's getting out of hand...which leads to thinking about where to relocate him...which leads to going through my pot ghetto...which leads to me thinking about where my new shed should go (please Santa don't let me down)...which leads to picking up a bag of mulch over there by the shed spot to be...which leads to mulching a few plants...which leads to getting out the hose to water down the mulch...which leads to all around watering...which leads to picking a few more late season tomatoes over there....which leads to putting the rotten ones into the compost bin, which is overflowing, and needs some moisture and a handful of fertilizer to aid digestion which leads to a trip into the greenhouse to get a scoopful...which leads to a chat with the orange tree who is in full bloom and smelling like heaven....which leads to watering the greenhouse plants...which leads to turning off the hose...and stopping an hour later and saying to myself "where did I leave the clippers?". Efficient, I am not.

However, my garden is a refuge, a place of peace for me and to me, there is no finer Saturday than a Saturday in the spring spent moving, pruning, fertilizing, re-arranging, watering and staggering inside covered with mud. Its my escape and I'm proud to say that I am finally old enough to say "this makes me happy and I simply don't care what others may think". I work in a very hectic, fast paced, high acuity recovery room....and its important (I believe) in my job to be able to have something else to do that takes you a million miles away from work.

Melissa - have you done the Vintage Garden suggestion of using their big ole boxes under mulch to cut down on weeds? That is what I'm starting to do in my new bed -- the boxes are trash anyhow (well..recycle..), so to let them decompose on the paths seems like a great idea.

Thanks again for this great subject...someday I want to see your garden. It must be heaven. I think you must live very close to heaven there in Italy. In my mind, you look like Diane Lane in Under a Tuscan Sky (is that the name of that lovely movie?).

Oh yes Melissa, we're having a wet autumn or winter with rain every other day. We had lots of snow a while ago but it's gone already. The ground is squishy. There's no need to water rhododendrons, usually one of our last garden chores. The latest of all is mulching our few tender roses but we wait until the ground is frozen to do that.

Oh, wow, I am so not an efficient gardener. But then that's not my goal when I'm out in the yard. I do it because I love it, all of it, from the weeding to throwing mulch bags, to fertilizing, etc.

It grounds me and keeps me sane. Besides, since the garden will never be truly 'finished' I see no need to rush the process. :)

Elaine

Blackcatgirl,

Come pay me a visit when you can! We love guests. When you get here, you will find me looking, not like Diane Lane, but like you: stumbling into the house after a long, happy day of not-very-efficient work, covered in mud outside and full of contentment within. Glad you like the thread.

Melissa

P.S. Our big boxes arrive wrapped round and round with plastic tape, so they go in the trash. One day I went to town when all the business people were putting their cardboard delivery boxes out for trash removal, and your idea certainly did cross my mind. I'll have to remember it.

P.P.S. Middle age is terribly underrated! I have aches and pains and sagging skin, but my mind's in great shape, and I finally know who I am. It's the greatest feeling in the world.

Close as I've come to efficiency is putting pruners, weeding tools, and various gloves in a bucket; I tuck the kneeling pads in there too (the large bark in the middle of the cheerio shaped bed is hard on the knees). I also have a small blue flag to mark the last rose I've worked on; then I know where to pick up if interrupted! Thanks to maintaining a good layer of hardwood mulch there's virtually no weeding, not here or at the two gardens at the arboetum. Planting requires multiple trips even WITH the cart. In fact I need a wheelbarrow to mix the backfill soil, AND a cart AND the bucket... I am the slowest planter you ever saw.

Oops, forgot the empty wastebasket I carry in my other hand for spotty leaves, spindly growth, and dead-heads. Feeding is time-consuming no matter what I do with so many roses all fed organically; the alfalfa tea and fish emulsion applications would go quicker if I could use a 5 gal bucket but that's toooo heavy. The solid amendments like Mills Magic are slow going because I scratch back the mulch and then replace it. A shrub rake has really helped speed up the feeding operation. And I am accumulating the eggsheels, orange peels and coffee grounds in a bucket next to the sink rather than scratching them in daily.

I don't have bermuda grass, but i have plenty of crabgrass. I bought some over the top, grass b gone, whtever you want to call it that just kills grass only. Mainly for the iris's, because i have so many and handpulling is a waste of time. I quit mulching because it blows away anyway. I just let the lawn grow longer this fall. The tree leaves i just let blow everywhere and maybe catch and provide some mulch. I only prune broken canes, but all my roses are under 3 years. I just mix and dump fertilizer, doesn't take that long. The most work I've done is put rock around them after getting 12tons of 5"x7" rock. I bought some soil for some rose beds i made to keep them from getting flooded in the spring. I quit amending holes when i plant the rose bands, i might add a little fertilizer, usually just plop them in the ground though. I guess i just do whatever i want to do, when i feel like it,lol. I don't spray, I could care less if and when they get bs. I worried about a baron giraud d la ain (sp), it dropped all it's leaves, but then they grew back and never did get any more bs, was more resistant than the other roses, actually it's 17 degrees and still has leaves. It seems the less i do, the better they do, maybe that's why i like roses so much!

I love gardening beyond any reasonable point and would like to take my time, but...
I have very demanding work, I work M-F, 10-11 hours each day. I come home usually after 7pm and have to cook for family,help with homework, clean, etc. So most I can do during my week days is to go around my garden around 6-6:30 AM (spring-fall, when there is light)and get some positive charge for the day. In addition I can sometimes pool a weed or too, tie some canes, but really very little can be done in 1/2 hour. Weekends are much better, all the time after completion of my basic house/family chores, if weather allows, I want to spend in my garden. It probably means I can spend 3- 4 hours each Saturday and Sunday in the garden. I have 125+ roses, tonns of perennials, vines, bushes etc, so HAVE to be efficient.
I use drip sistem for watering
Compost and fertilizer once a year, for this I take a day off from work in spring.
I get some payed help to put mulch in spring.
I used to do Banner spraying once in 3 weeks on Saturday mornings when family is still sleeping, but now I am in the stage of changing to no spray garden.
I prune over long period of time, 1-2 bushes each weekend from November till March, starting from hardy oncebloomers, which love late fall/winter pruning. I train one climber at a time, again over long period.
Weeding takes significan part of this 3-4 hours, but I sort of enjoy it, like Lori.
During JB season I just wait. I used to collect them, but there are too many anyway.
I spend quite a lot of time just going around, admiring roses, stalking, cutting, squishing aphids, looking for early signs of problems, etc.
The good thing is roses don't mind this approach at all, they reward me with blooms and my garden mostly looks happy. Having many different plants mixed helps.

Olga

I'm learning to be efficient, not because I'm in a hurry but because I have a large garden with acreage. I watch how my gardener works that one day a week and learn how to prepare. I don't tolerate the heat well, so I get most chores done in the spring, fall and winter. I use a lot of stuff, and walking back and forth to the garden shed takes up too much time. It makes sense to set-up and organize for half an hour or so before getting under way.

Step one is always dressing for the task. I wear a hat and sun screen and gloves. In damp months, I wear overalls sprayed with Permethrin as a tick repellant. If I'm mowing or chipping, I wear a respirator mask and hearing protection. Footwear varies by season, from sneakers in summer to steel toed boots when I use the chain saw, bush hog or mower.

I load up my garden tool bag (a long-abandoned Little League baseball bag) with pruners, loppers, saw, shortie shovel, shortie rake, file for sharpening, Hori Hori, chopsticks, machete, gloves, pick mattock and other weeding tools. I get my garden stool, kneeling pads. When pruning or deadheading, I mix a container of disinfectant for my tools. I have a shortie plastic garbage can I can actually lift when its full. If the job is large scale, I take a tarp. I always take my regular tool bag (pliers, screwdrivers, wrenches). If I'm using power tools, I take gas and oil. I load all this stuff into my ATV basket and garden cart, and drive it near as possible to the garden location where I'm working.

When I do ferts, I have to do entire sections at one time, or I'll forget what's been done and what hasn't. I'm learning that fertilizing can be put off to every other year when we have low to normal rainfall. Now that's effeciency.

Springtime is a tradeoff among weeding, mowing and fertilizing, with weeding and mowing winning. We mow the fenceline, a large swath surrrounding the gardens, and a pathway through the middle of the property each spring before the fire danger is too high (before mid-June). We're surrounded by acres of grasslands, so the weed seed blows into the garden from all around us.

Summertime is a continuation of spring weeding, along with brush control on the acreage. That means either bush hog on cool, foggy days or herbicide for poison oak once it gets hot and dry. I use colored landscape flags to flag the locations of poison oak, which I can't see in the spring grasses, if it re-emerges, pits in the fields that need to be graded, infrastructure to avoid with equipment.

Fall is for mowing the whole acreage, clearing brush, chipping, mulching and, worst of all, clearing the grasslands of cobble, so I can have fewer visits from the mobile tractor repair guy.

Then its time to start pruning...

The only thing I can say for all this is that it beats sitting at a desk and pushing paper all day. I get to spend my days outside with my trusty garden companions/rabbit harriers/gopher eradicators.

Here is a link that might be useful: Effeciencies of Scale

Sometimes I can be the most impossibly inefficient gardener on earth. You know, looking for lost pruners, making 50 trips back to the garage for something forgotten, not able to concentrate..... I find those kind of days were really meant just to putter and look, breathe the fresh air, admire the lizards and bees, and smell the fragrant roses, rather than actually work. Our minds and bodies do truly send messages to us, if we only listen!

Aside from those days, the best investment I have ever made for gardening has been a garden cart that hooks on to the back of my little John Deere lawn mower. I usually keep it pre-loaded with most things I need (except when I get lazy and park them somewhere else....see certain days above). Before heading out I do a once over to see if extra fertilizers or compost need to get loaded, and away I go. It sure beats trying to hand carry plants and heavy stuff, and I can just hop on and park where needed as I move along.

The flag idea is excellent for marking the last plant worked on. I always think I will remember but I don't always.

Sandy

***The possibility of being alone, with busy hands and mental freedom, is to me one of the greatest charms of gardening. ---I love this statement. My garden is my refuge, therapy and solace in life. I think I'm obsessive/compulsive. I work a fast-paced, high stress, high-level retail management job (for my day job), but my free time is happily spent in my garden, searching for plants, or visiting my 'plant' friends. All of my free time between March to Nov is spent on gardening- I have to force myself to take time for friends and housework during the growing season. From Dec through Feb- my house is much more in order and I am busy germinating seedlings that I do not have room to plant (and ordering new plants for spring)!! I enjoy propagating and germinating many different plants and give most of them away. I often tell my partner- I would be completely content w/ a 5 acre garden on an island as long as I have an internet connection and my three dogs. Nothing more rewarding than my dogs by my side all day while I work.

I abide by the theory of reasonable expectations. It would be entirely unreasonable for anyone to expect my garden to be pretty all season.

My work schedule is full. I get up at 4:45 and am on the road by 5:30. I get back home around 7:00 p.m. Not much gets done after that. Unless there is major adrenalin flowing. That's springtime! And that's when my garden looks good!

I'm strong and still healthy. An open weekend provides opportunity. If I can get myself going, a lot gets done. When I am excited, I can work dawn 'til dusk. Intermittent infusion of beer throughout the day is helpful. Although afterwords, I don't feel too healthy.

Unfortunately, once the Japanese Beetles, midge, black spot and heat arrive, old Harry starts to wilt. The garden soon follows.