How Doing LESS Transformed My Food Garden Saved My Sanity

Over the past five years, I've transformed my empty suburban backyard into a highly productive food oasis, producing hundreds of kilograms of food every year. And through Good Design, I've developed a low effort system that only takes me four hours a week to maintain. But despite the careful planning, I've still had my fair share of chaos. How'd you get out? You made a mess. Why? Because Good Design is only one part of a successful food garden. The other part is good management. And I've had to learn the hard way that just doing more isn't always the answer. So in this video, I want to talk about five ways I've learned to work smarter, not harder, that have transformed my garden and made it sustainable. When I first got into gardening, I was incredibly enthusiastic about growing healthy, nutrient-dense plants. And I still am. But back then, the initial excitement led me to be totally swept up in endless tips, advice, products and techniques out there. I was trying everything from compost teas to homemade amendments with eggshells and potatoes, foliar sprays. Are you also buying everything? I was buying lots of products and stuff like that as well. What about the equipment you purchased? No, we don't need to talk about that. Do you want to talk about how you almost financially ruined us? I think it's time to talk about that one purchase. Well, I did buy... I invested in a microscope, which, you know, cost a little bit of money. Because you were going to get so much use out of it. I was going to use it a lot. And I was going to monitor my soil and be keeping track of all the fungi and the bacteria and the amoeba and the nematodes and influence the microbial population of my soil. But... And how many times have you used it? Uh, you know, a few times? Five times? All of this constant experimentation took up a lot of time and money and I was becoming exhausted, frustrated and confused about the results and whether all this doing, doing, doing was even benefiting my plants. So I took a step back and instead of constantly intervening, I just observed what happened around me without doing anything at all. And this is when I had a realization. Gardening is not about me controlling and intervening at every turn to force the outcomes I want for the plants and the garden. It's about creating the right conditions, then stepping back and letting nature do what it does best. Given the right fundamental conditions, the plants you grow are in most cases more than capable of producing you abundant harvests themselves. This is not to say that fertilizers and amendments don't have their place. They certainly do. And I do occasionally use these things, except the microscope. If you haven't got the fundamentals right, then other stuff you might be doing to keep your plants healthy is a bit of a distraction and potentially creating a lot more effort than what's needed. I now focus 90% of my efforts on just five things, which I'll cover later in the video. Another way I've boosted my garden's productivity without adding effort is by harnessing the power of time. It comes down to planning and patience. An effort at the right moment, plus patience, can lead to bigger, better results. Take these olives, for example. We picked them when they were perfectly ripe, dropped them into a simple brine, and then time did the rest. Planning and patience also goes a long way when it comes to making compost. It can take 21 days, or it can take six months. And look, I've done both. Let me tell you which ones more work. When you do the 21-day method, you build a big pile, wait four days for it to heat up, and then turn it every two days for a total of eight turns. In order for this to work, you have to make sure you've got the optimal level of moisture and balance for making the compost. You don't want it to be too wet, The six-month method, which is my standard, means I'm building a pile, leaving it for a couple of weeks, then turning it, then leaving it for a couple of months, turning it, then letting it sit for a few more months or until I'm ready to use it. On the whole, it's way less work for better quality compost, in my opinion. That's good. Can I have one? You want one? Chuck me one. You sure? Don't play with me. Another example of where you can let time do the work is building fertility in your garden beds. We all want fertile soil and big harvests, but even in organic gardening, it's easy to think that the answer is more fertilizer, more compost, more manure, and hours of digging it all in. But the truth is there's a much simpler way, cover crops. Using cover crops is, in my opinion, by far the best way to build fertility deep into the soil profile. All you have to do is sprinkle a few seeds on the soil and the plants will take care of the rest. It's a good idea to select a diverse combination of species. Here I've got oats, broad beans, hairy vetch, peas, and clover, and all except the oats are legumes, which is great in particular for fixing nitrogen, but technically all plants feed the soil by exuding carbon-rich food for many different microbes and accumulate nutrients in the soil. So you can use any plant as a cover crop, but if you're growing them for that purpose, the key is to cut them down at the beginning of their reproductive phase before they produce seed, fruit, or flower so that the energy and nutrients stay in the soil. If you've seen my other videos, you'll know that I'm all about being efficient in the garden. So you might be surprised to know that like many gardeners, I love to potter and I'm convinced that this seemingly ineffectual behavior has made all the difference to my garden's productivity. Let me explain. When we got our chickens, I started waking up early to let them out from their coop in the morning, and then I bought an automatic door which I thought would be a great idea because I'd be saving this time in the morning, and well, as I explained in my video about backyard chickens, it turned out to be quite a disaster. I came down into the backyard, I found four chickens missing, which I then eventually found in the neighbor's backyard dead. So I was back to getting up early in the morning to let them out, but this time I started to develop a bit of a routine around it. I'd make my coffee, see the chooks, and then I'd spend leisurely 10 to 15 minutes just pottering around the garden. What I noticed over time was that the more frequent visits meant that the garden actually became less work to keep thriving compared to when I used to pull lots of big sessions over the weekend. I find that if you can get into this habit of even just five minutes a day, it's much easier to keep on top of weeds, watering, and pests if you're around to spot the issues before they become a big problem. Do something funny. I don't know what to do that's funny. Skipping. Whilst this area may look a little bit neglected and overgrown, believe it or not, this is a tiny food forest in the making. For those that are unfamiliar with the concept, a food forest is a diverse assembly of primarily perennial plants that mimic a forest ecosystem. They produce their own fertility, require less weeding, water, and frequent replanting. In this kind of arrangement, you can select species to occupy different layers from the canopy to the ground cover, and in doing so create a system that's stable, self-sustaining, highly productive, but also low effort for you. Here I've intentionally let a ground cover of weeds grow in these beds to feed the soil whilst the productive species get established. Now this is all obviously going to require quite a lot of patience and time, but I think creating this kind of system will be worth it in the long run. Alright, so as promised at the start of the video, I want to leave you with the five fundamentals that I focus on 90% of my time in the garden. Now these may not sound revolutionary, but they are essential in creating the right conditions so that you can step back and let nature do what it does best. Plants need the right amount of water. Sounds embarrassingly obvious, right? But in hot dry times, are you keeping the soil moist throughout the whole bed? And in wet times, are you sure your soil is draining well? Having an irrigation system and checking soil moisture regularly can really help with reliable watering. And as for water logging, well that's addressed by my next fundamental. Good soil structure. You can spray all the compost teas in the world, but if you don't have well-structured soil, your plants will still suffer. Compare these two handfuls of soil. One is crumbly, full of both large and microscopic gaps that allow air, water, and roots to infiltrate, and provides an enormous amount of surface area for microbes to call home. The other is hard, solid, and very difficult to infiltrate. Now, it's actually living plant roots and microbes that will turn soil from this to this over time, but if your soil is really compacted, then they'll find it difficult to get established. So the best thing to do to kickstart the process, in my opinion, is forking to gently open up the soil. But this may not be enough if there are mineral imbalances in your soil. Too much magnesium, for example, can keep the soil tight and sticky, whereas too much calcium can make the soil too loose. So if you don't notice your soil structure improving over time, you may need to get a soil test. Plants need the right amount of sunlight, and as I've spoken about in my food garden design video, different crops have different tolerances for shade and direct sunlight. But also, the amount of solar radiation that your garden receives may be dramatically different depending on where you are in the world. I find that the best way to figure out whether your plants need more or less sunlight is simply through observation. If your plants look drawn out and leggy, then they likely need more sun. If their leaves are curling, scorched, bleached, or wilting, then too much light might be part of the problem. Timing. When you put your plants in the ground can have a significant impact on their production. Planting tomatoes in cold soil, even if the weather is warm, will stress them out and make them susceptible to pests and diseases. Planting brassicas in the heart of summer before it's cooled down is equally a bad idea. Each crop has its own preferences, and if you can get it right, it can really improve their health and vigor. So get yourself a soil thermometer, follow your local planting guides, and if in doubt, you can always stagger the planting to reduce the risk. Last but not least is physical protection. In organic gardening, physical barriers to keep pests out are often essential for getting a harvest. I'm a firm believer that healthy plants can defend themselves from many insects and pathogens, but some will require intervention, and they're helpless against birds and mammals. The main barriers I use in my garden are insect and bird netting, but you may need to use fencing, cages, or maybe even bottomless plastic pots depending on your pest. Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. Let me know in the comments below how you work smarter in the garden. Give the video a like, and don't forget to subscribe. Why are you so flushed? It's hot. Are you embarrassed? Embarrassed about coming clean? Yeah. About the microscope? So embarrassed.