10,000+ Seeds, Zero Maintenance… How Much Food Will Grow?
1 weekend setup of garden beds and swales
$200 budget for organic soil mix and seeds and few seedlings
Zero maintenance approach
10,000+ Seeds
So I sowed around 10,000 seeds of lettuce, dill, parsley, strawberries and mint. And some basil. Also capsicums and few kinds of cherry tomatoes.
How efficient will be my zero-work approach?
Setting it up – 29 May
Setting up swales and garden beds, kinda happened over a weekend when I was keen.
Reading the seed packages – understanding when and how to sow the seeds is crucial.
Quick look up on Google to find out which plants go well together, to help grouping the plants.
Tomatoes and capsicum and basil go well together.
Strawberry and mint like each other.
Dill and Parsley kinda everywhere. rarara, okay… enough googling..
Positioning of garden bed: the spot that gets a bit more sun has the tomatoes and basil.
Apart from that, there was not much choice.
Happy to have a backyard to grow food at all.
A tip that I find helped a lot:
Using just very very little mulch, sprinkled over the whole thing when done, like you’d sprinkle spices over your meal.
Pick just the really light weight mulch so the tiny new plants can come through easily.
Taking off – 12 June
Look out it’s coming up! Not doing anything now, see ya later.
The only important rule of thumb I was going with:
First 6 days are as important as the next 6 weeks.
So I gave them as much attention as I could for the first 6 days and then off you go.
Ready to eat – 09 July
Nice, now that was worth a weekend’s effort. Let’s eat.
Now strawberries and mint were struggling, wondering why the mint didn’t make it.
But the lettuce became like a thick carpet of dense lettuce leaves, we couldn’t even finish it.
Lots of tomatoes coming all the time now, some falling off and germinating again. Regularly throwing random tomatoes around in the garden.
No watering at all
The micro-swales get fed with rainwater from the nearby shed.
