Work will expand into the allotted time, goes the saying, and garden work is no exception.

If I have all afternoon to prune my nectarine tree, then I will fiddle and get artsy and take all afternoon to prune my one nectarine tree.

But I have other fruit trees that need pruning, not to mention an irrigation repair job, the wheat seeds that need to be sown, the compost that needs to be spread in preparation for planting broccoli, and on and on. I want to get a lot of food coming out of my garden, but I only have so much time.

The balancing act that I try to perform is keeping food gardening fun while also efficient.

Five practices that I often, though admittedly not always, follow in order to get more garden from less time are:

1. Work during the most comfortable time of day

In the summer, I get more done in the early morning or late evening, and I enjoy the time in the yard more. This is because the heat of midday is enervating. Even past dark is sometimes ideal in summer.

(See my post, “Night gardening.”)

Conversely, in the winter, working in the middle hours of the day is when the temperature is usually most comfortable and when I can be most efficient.

Although the rest of life precludes you from only working in the garden when the temperature is perfect, at least you can try to schedule things accordingly.

2. Maximum 20 percent experimentation

I am naturally inclined to experiment. I love to try new varieties of tomatoes, new irrigation schedules, new mixes for containers, new sowing dates, new grafting methods, new styles of pruning, new methods of pest control. However, I must acknowledge that the new takes more time than the tried and true.

In his book, The Lean Farm, Ben Hartman writes:

“In order not to get bogged down by experiments, I suggest a 15 percent rule after the second or third year of your farm: 15 percent of your time should be reserved for innovating systems to try out new ideas that are exciting to you (creativity), while the rest of your time should be focused on production systems that are known variables (discipline). Anything less than 15 percent and a farmer is prone to boredom or burnout through repetition, and your farm will miss out on new ideas for improvement. Any more than 15 percent and your farm could struggle because your time is gobbled up by your experiments.”

I go with closer to a 20 percent rule because I don’t have the same constraints as a farmer.

3. Avoid handwatering

If time were unlimited, I would water every citrus tree and every cucumber plant by hand because it is so satisfying. When I do have some extra time, I enjoy using a watering can or turning on the hose and sprinkling plants, but that is an indulgence. Far more efficient is to set up sprinklers or drip emitters and then irrigate ten or a hundred plants at once.

Automated irrigation still requires intermittent attention, and it costs a few bucks, but it has allowed me to grow so much more than I could when I handwatered everything. About twenty years ago, I did grow my vegetable garden by handwatering but I had more leisure time then.

The one area in which I’ve not been able to avoid handwatering is with plants in containers, as I often have vegetable seedlings and fruit trees of various sizes that need different water amounts and schedules.

(See my posts, “The easiest automatic irrigation” and “Drip irrigation bucket” and “Installing drip irrigation for a vegetable garden” and “Drip irrigation vs. micro-sprinklers for fruit trees”)

4. Batch sowing and planting

It doesn’t take much more time to gather ten labels and seedling trays compared to one, or three buckets of compost compared to one, or five seed packets compared to one, or to water ten trays of seedlings compared to one.

Because of this, I try to concentrate my vegetable sowings (and seedling plantings) into two or three bigger events per year rather than a dozen smaller ones.

This reminds me of why I prefer to have a dozen chickens rather than two. It’s practically the same amount of work either way. It takes just as long to collect two eggs as it does to collect a dozen.

5. Watch the time

I try to keep in mind that work will expand into its allotted time so I often set a countdown timer on my watch in order to prevent pruning my nectarine tree from taking half a day. I say to myself, I think I can get the pruning done in 20 minutes. And then I set the timer. Otherwise, I’ll be staring at buds and reflecting on the past year’s crop and doing my seventeenth circle around the tree at sunset. But maybe that’s just me.

What do you do to keep up the enjoyment and productivity in the yard while also reducing the waste of precious gardening time?

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