Growing up, I absolutely dreaded “it’s time to weed the garden” days. From my recollection, it was always hot and miserable, with the sun beating down on our heads and the back of our necks, as we went row by row, hoeing and pulling.
Weeding the garden was always a family event in my home growing up. An all-hands-on-deck affair that seemed to always happen in the heat of the day.
The two hoes we owned were handed out to those deemed capable of not destroying tomato, pea, and pepper plants in their infancy. As for the rest of the crew, we had our hands – and boy did we have our work cut out for us.
There were always plenty of weeds to go around.
Weeds growing too near a plant to be hoed were pulled by the hand crew. If you were deemed worthy enough to operate a gardening hoe, you were guaranteed to end the day with blisters on the palms of your hands – never mind that you wore gloves! – and an aching back from your shoulders to your hips.
We held two or three of these events each growing season, and then harvest would come with its own busy series of events.
When gardening becomes exhausting
In truth, I always believed these were just the necessary parts of having a garden.
(1)You begin with an exhausting day of getting the garden prepped. (2)Followed by another full-day of planting and getting the garden in a few days or weeks later. (3)After consistent watering, you schedule out a full afternoon dedicating to weeding the garden. Then repeat that step. Then repeat it again. (4)Following a handful of weeks of enjoying bounties from the garden, you choose a day before the final frost and do a final harvest sweep. Then wait to do it all again the next year.
This was the habit I knew, and my first handful of gardens – as an adult, living on my own away from home and calling the shots – this is what I knew, and what I did.
Days scheduled out across late spring, over the summer, into the fall dedicated to garden tasks.
Prep the garden this day. Plant the garden this day and that day. Weed the garden, then weed again. Harvest one last time.
It wasn’t until about six years ago that I got smart and realized: this is a terrible routine!
Gardening like this is exhausting. Of course, there is so much to love about gardening, that even with these tiring days – it’s still well worth the effort. But I’ve come to realize that these exhausting days of garden prep day, then garden planting day, garden weeding day, etc. – they aren’t necessary.
There is no need to ever feel exhausted gardening.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that gardening doesn’t take work. It absolutely does. But all of that gardening work doesn’t have to be exhausting.
In fact, I am a believer that gardening can and should should be enjoyable, always.
These days, I’ve found one single thing in my daily routine that helped gardening to always feel enjoyable. That is: to get into the garden every day.
Those days of exhausting, hard work in the garden were hard and exhausting because I was ultimately playing catch up.
I was basically ignoring my garden for days – even weeks – at a time. Only watering, which was sometimes done not even to my credit thanks to wonderful Rain Bird timers.
Those long heat-of-the-afternoon weeding days were basically cram sessions for the garden.
And they couldn’t happen fast. Even if starting in the cool hours of the morning, weeding always drug out to those hot afternoon hours because there was just that much work to do.
And truth alert – it wasn’t fun!
I had delayed working in the garden – not on purpose and not as a way of procrastination. In fact, it was rather intentional. I had left the garden alone, busying myself with other tasks which always exist, all the while believing that it was fine and simply how things were done.
But by leaving the garden alone for days or weeks at a time, doing nothing but watering, I gradually increased my workload. Because, here’s a truth statement for you: weeds never stop growing.
Just like your plants grow everyday with benefits from water and sunshine, those weeds in your garden – the bane of every gardener’s existence – they downright thrive.
And if you follow the same routine I was doing with my garden – leaving it on autopilot and then coming back for one big day of weeding – you’ll find yourself overrun with weeds, and likely feeling a little overwhelmed.
Plus, you’ll probably end your day with a sore back and blisters on your hands.
Again – not fun.
Spreading the Workload
By gardening every day, I am able to curb that workload. So much so, that it no longer feels like a task to be done. Rather, weeding the garden happens easily. It is simply part of my daily routine, much like feeding the dogs or cooking breakfast.
When I’m outside doing my daily feed chores, either in the morning or evening, I stop for a moment to walk through the garden. This gives me an opportunity to see the needs of my garden.
Ten or fifteen minutes walking through the garden, pulling weeds here and there while I check on my plants, and later in the season on my produce, is all that is needed.
If I stop to snack on few fresh snow peas, maybe I pull a few weeds that are coming in amongst the pea plants.
Not only does being in the garden every day help make weeding the garden manageable – easy even, but it also helps me be aware of what is happening in the garden. Like a daily check-up on my plants and produce.
I can immediately see if I have squash bugs, and address the area with a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth before any real damage is done to the plants.
I can see if an area of my garden isn’t getting fully watered, for whatever reason.
Whatever the need is, I am able to quickly tackle the problem because I am there, in the garden, every day.
Those ten or fifteen minutes pulling weeds throughout the week means I never need to plan a weed-the-garden-day. And I haven’t! No sore back or palms full of blisters for over six years, and I plan to keep it that way.
It doesn’t have to be every day
Despite the title for this article, I admit that I don’t even go into my garden every.single.day.
In fact, just last week I found myself experiencing one of those crazy days when a quick, early morning trip to town ended up dragging into the afternoon, which was full of its own schedule of events that lasted into the evening – and I missed getting into my garden that day.
It happens!
Also, I am a believer that Sundays are special days, and an exemption from most things. So I don’t always get into the garden on Sundays.
That’s okay!
On rainy days, you better believe that I am going to tromp through my garden, leaving mini-crater boot prints throughout. If it rains, I’m staying out of the garden until it dries out. This, to me, just makes sense!
The point is, I work in my garden most days.
The goal might be to get into the garden “every day”, but that is simply a push to make sure that I get into my garden as frequent as possible.
Good for the Soul
Gardening every day has made a tremendous difference in smoothing the workload of weeding the garden, and has helped me stay more in tune and aware of my plants and produce in the garden. Those ten or fifteen minutes have made a huge difference in the physical workload.
But truth be told, those minutes in the garden every day are not only good for my plants, but they are good for me! Garden walks are good clear-your-head moments – minutes of clarity that I find I need for my own mental stability.
There is something soulful about getting dirt under your nails and seeing the efforts of your labors blossom into something alive and beautiful.
Those moments in the garden help keep the weeds at bay so we don’t have to endure long, exhausting afternoons of sore backs and blisters from weeding the garden. And they help us keep our plants alive and healthy. But perhaps more than anything for us gardeners, those daily garden walks offer us moments to thrive. So that’s where I’ll be, walking through and working in my garden, every day (or at least most days), and enjoying every minute of it.
