Contributed Post
USDA photo by Lance Cheung
Gardening is a fun and relaxing hobby. There’s nothing quite like browsing through plant books, roaming the aisles of your local gardening centre, picking out your favorite seeds and bulbs, and then watching them grow and blossom before your very eyes. That being said, it is of hard work, taking up hours of your time, and causing immeasurable amounts of stress. Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to make your life a little easier and save yourself some time.
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Come Up With A Plan
Before you get to work, you need to figure out exactly what you want doing in your garden and come up with a plan. If you don’t, you’ll spend far too much time glossing over the details and might end up making decisions you live to regret. Start by measuring the area you want to landscape and draw a rough sketch of where you want things to go, including plants and paths. Ensure that this area is suitable for your plants before you start planting.
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Leave Your Lawn To Professionals
Lawns require a lot of maintenance, including watering, mowing, weeding, and more. Because of this, you may want to hire professionals to carry out lawn care services. This will save you a lot of time and stress, allowing you to focus on the parts of gardening you really enjoy. You might even want to consider ditching your lawn altogether. Instead, you could lay artificial turf, fill the space with gravel or stones, or build a deck or patio.
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Keep Tools Clean And Sharp
Broken and dull gardening tools can make your life incredibly difficult, wasting more time than you could possibly imagine. Because of this, it’s important that you keep yours clean and sharp, and understand when you need to replace them. You should also keep your tools together, in an easy to access place close to your garden. If necessary, you should build yourself a tool shed so that you don’t waste too much time going back and forth between your tools and plants.
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Grow Plants With Similar Requirements
Growing too many different types of plant can make your life incredibly difficult, as they all have different requirements, needing various amounts of light and water. Because of this, you should opt for very similar varieties. To make your life even easier, you should go for plants that require little pruning, are resistant to diseases, and cope well in your climate. For example, if you live in a hot country, why not plant some almond trees and other plants that grow well in the heat. This means it’ll take you much less time to care for them as they all have similiar requirements.
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Plant Everything Close To Water
Regardless of the plants you choose, they will all need watering at some point, so it makes a lot of sense to plant everything close to water. This way, you won’t have to waste time hauling hose pipes and watering cans back and forth. This is especially important for plant varieties that have more watering needs. If you don’t have a water source that is easy to access, go and build one near your planting beds.
Gardening can be a stressful and exhausting hobby, but, with the tips above, you should be able to save a lot of time.
