A Lazy Girl's Guide to Veggie Gardening

How to grow vegetables when you don't have a lot of time or energy for growing vegetables

My partner and I have been growing veggies for almost 15 years now. When we first began, I remember it felt very daunting. We read a lot of books and blogs about when and where to plant things, what kind of fertiliser to use and how to manage pests. We followed the rules, we weeded meticulously, we nurtured our seedlings like they were our children and… They did ok. But only ok.

Over the years we began to get a better feel for things. We worked out what works in our climate and which plants thrive where we live. We got better at reading the seasons, we determined which tasks were actually essential and which ones weren’t, and our veggie patch got better and better. These days we honestly do the bare minimum when it comes gardening, but I think our veggie patch is more productive than ever.

For me, the key to success with gardening is keeping it so simple, it doesn’t feel like a chore. I will never be the kind of girl who spends hours every week weeding and follows a strict planting schedule. If I had to do that, I’d likely give up immediately! So here’s what I recommend instead.

If possible, invest in raised beds

They will save your back, keep the weeds away and significantly reduce the impact of slugs and snails. The first veggie beds we ever built were low and set up on the lawn, and it was a constant battle to keep the grass and snails out. Our current raised beds are set on a patch of gravel and though we still get weeds popping up in the gravel, we get very few making it all the way up to the veggie beds. Slugs and snails don’t like crossing gravel, so we also get very few of those

Choose resilient, prolific plants

When it comes to choosing your veggies, go for the easy-going types. Look for plants that are known for their abundance alongside hardiness and the ability to thrive with minimal care.

• Rainbow Chard: Rainbow chard is easy peasy to grow and can be chopped up and put in just about anything. If you let it go to seed and self-sow, you’ll have rainbow chard on hand for the rest of your life.

• Tomatoes: Tomatoes love the heat which is great news for us here in Australia. I especially love planting the beautiful heirloom varieties you will never find in the shops.

• Kale: Tough and versatile, kale can withstand almost any weather conditions. We plant it in autumn and it feeds us all winter, surviving on nothing more than winter rain and neglect.

• Zucchinis: Easy to grow and ridiculously prolific, just be wary of planting more than a few! Each plant will produce loads of zucchinis and there are only so many zucchini fritters and chocolate zucchini cakes a family can eat in one season.

• Herbs: Basil, coriander, parsley, chives and most other herbs can grow in small spaces and don’t require much attention. Just be careful of mint! It is lovely stuff, but very invasive. Plant it in a pot, rather than a garden bed.

Embrace trial and error

Lettuces grow so well where we live, at this point we don’t even need to plant them. They self-seed and pop up everywhere, including in our lawn! On the other hand, I have pretty much given up on carrots because our soil isn’t sandy enough so they always come out gnarly, twisted and impossible to peel. You will only discover these things via trial and error. The best way to learn is to throw some seeds in the ground, see what happens and take note of patterns.

Try companion planting

Companion planting is a fantastic strategy for lazy gardeners looking to maximise their harvest with minimal effort, while reducing the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. By pairing compatible plants together, you can naturally enhance growth, deter pests, and improve soil health. Tomatoes love growing alongside basil and the scent of basil repels insects that might eat tomatoes. They say growing next to basil also boosts the flavor of your tomatoes!

Remember to mulch

Applying a thick layer of mulch not only reduces the need for weeding and watering, it also helps maintain soil temperature. As an added bonus, as the mulch breaks downs, it enriches the soil without any extra effort on your part. We use sugarcane mulch.

Start a compost bin

The only fertilisers we use in our veggie garden are compost and cow manure. We do make our own compost but don’t usually produce enough for all our garden beds, so we supplement with bought compost. If you live in a regional area like us, you might have access to farms selling bags of manure at their gate, but you can also buy it at a hardware store or garden centre.

We top our veggie beds up with compost and/or manure twice a year. Once in autumn, after we pull out all out spent summer plants and prep for our winter crop. And once in spring, when we clear out the winter veggies and prep for the summer ones. This keeps our soil healthy and nutrient-rich, without adding any artificial fertilisers.

Let things go to seed

I always leave a few kale, beetroot, chard and lettuce plants go to seed, then the next season the seeds sprout and give us a new crop, without any work on our part. We also get lots of volunteer tomatoes sprout all over our backyard. I find the self-sown plants are always the healthiest and hardiest.

Sometimes something random we haven’t even planted for a couple of years pops up and surprises us. This winter we had a few unexpected purple cabbages!

Don’t panic about pests

We don’t use any pesticides. Having our raised veggie beds on gravel helps protect them from snails and slugs, but some seasons we do get lots of cabbage moths. They make a mess of the kale, chewing holes in it, but they don’t touch the heads of broccoli or cauliflower. If we spot the caterpillars we pick them off by hand, but they are so well camouflaged, they are easy to miss. There are lots of homemade and natural remedies you can try for pest control in the garden but the bugs usually only last a few weeks, so we don’t worry too much. We once had aphids on our broccoli but someone told us if we left them a couple of weeks aphid season would be over and they’d disappear. Low and behold, they were right and the aphids were gone the next week.

The truth is, we do sometimes lose plants to pests, but that’s the way it is meant to be. I’d prefer we didn’t handle or ingest pesticides, and I don’t want to use anything that will harm our bees and other important invertebrates, so we accept that pests are just part of the circle of life.

Forget perfection

You could spend all day every day in the garden and you’d still get annoying pests, failed crops and unexpected weather conditions to contend with, so why not just embrace the natural, untamed beauty of your veggie patch? A few weeds? No problem! A wonky row of plants? That’s character! Self sown tomatoes in the rose bed? Free food! Try to enjoy the process rather than striving for an immaculate garden. This mindset shift can be incredibly freeing.

Growing veggies doesn’t have to be ridiculously laborious or difficult. Throw out the rule book, roll your sleeves up and just get stuck in. You might be surprised by just how much you can grow with very little effort.

Katie xx