Lazy gardener lands on new method
(Originally published May 2024)
Over the winter, I heard about an intriguing vegetable-growing technique called “lazy gardening.”
As far as I knew, that was the kind of gardening I’d been doing for two decades. And based on my results, it was not a method I’d recommend.
But the lazy gardening I do—heavy on half measures, flagging enthusiasm, and growing neglect—isn’t the same. This trendy version, also known as “no-dig gardening,” relies on proactive steps to create beds that require less maintenance and produce higher yields.
Is “lazy gardening” just a PR term to trick people like me into thinking it’s not a lot of work?
I’m about to find out.
I grow vegetables every year, but not well. Sometimes I water faithfully; other times I make the veggies fight for survival. Sometimes I spend many hours keeping the garden tidy; other times I throw a hoe into the bed and hope its mere presence will intimidate the weeds.
The other day at the garden center (a place they’ll apparently let anyone go), a nice man asked me for some gardening advice. He had no way of knowing this was like asking a yellow Lab for advice on how to reformat a hard drive. Rather than be unmasked as an impostor, I said nothing and backed myself under a pile of bark mulch, where I cowered until he wandered off.
Maybe this lazy gardening thing is my chance to finally succeed.
“Sometimes I spend many hours keeping the garden tidy; other times I throw a hoe into the bed and hope its mere presence will intimidate the weeds.”
Here’s how it works: The first year, instead of tilling in your weeds in the spring and then spending the summer pulling them as they fight their way back to the surface— stronger than ever and out for revenge—you smother them with sheets of cardboard. You ignore their faint screams as you lay several inches of well-composted soil on top.
Weeks later, when the cardboard has disintegrated, most of the weeds will have died (in a satisfyingly slow and agonizing manner). Your plants, luxuriating in the rich, loose soil on top, will, for once, have time to establish themselves without being choked out.
Each subsequent year, instead of turning over the soil, you add a light layer of compost on top of the beds. There’s science behind it, stuff about moisture retention and preserving the layers of organisms and fungi in the soil and so on. Whatever. I’ve spent years bending spades in Addison County clay; lazy gardening had me at “no dig.”
I began by hoarding cardboard boxes and then took an unprecedented step: I paid for dirt. Yup. Last weekend I had a few yards of compost and soil dumped at the edge of the garden. I don’t want to say it was the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in 2024, but I did hug the delivery driver.
So far, as expected, I’m finding that lazy gardening isn’t all that lazy. I’ve spent hours laying cardboard on the ground and shoveling fancy new soil and compost on top. But I can already see a benefit: Unlike the native soil on our property, this stuff is movable.
When seed-planting instructions say, “Cover seeds with a fine layer of soil,” I can do that now. In the past, I would just lob brick-sized clumps of clay onto the bed and hope for the best.
As with most ideas that grab me, however, I’ve allowed myself to be sucked in by well-produced YouTube videos on the subject. I’m currently fascinated with a British man named Charles Dowding—the Bob Ross of no-dig gardening. His gentle voice radiates peace, nothing like the emotions I’ve always associated with gardening—mostly frustration and disappointment.
His gardens are neat and beautiful and free of weeds, and when I watch his videos, I imagine I too could have 1.3 acres of orderly no-dig goodness where the vegetables practically grow themselves.
Of course, I ignore that Dowding has deep knowledge, a complex composting system, and a full-time staff who work tirelessly off-camera. If I had those three things—plus a decent attention span—I could have bountiful gardens, too.
I don’t know whether my interest in the garden will, for once, last as long as the growing season. But at the moment, this new version of lazy gardening has me hooked.
Now I’m looking into whether there’s some version of “lazy cleaning” that might work for me too.
