78 Minutes a Week Feeds My Family

9 October 2024, written by Benedict Vanheems

Time is precious – I know I could do with more of it! So how do we grow big harvests in what little time we have – and ensure more food for less effort?

Buckets of Potatoes

I have great success growing potatoes in my raised beds, but growing in containers is even easier. Just fill large pots with good quality potting mix, perhaps with a little general purpose organic fertiliser added for good measure, then thrust a couple of seed potatoes down into the bottom. All you then have to do is keep them well-watered.

You can store containers of potatoes when the season draws to a close by just removing the foliage and moving the pots under cover to tip out and enjoy whenever they’re needed. Simple!

Choose Plants and Varieties Wisely

Making the most efficient use of time starts with choosing wisely – the right plant or the right variety for the right place. My sweet corn, for example, has done pretty well this summer. Corn loves warmth and sunshine, so I’ve given it one of the warmest spots in the garden. It’s been a bit of a chilly summer by recent standards, but that doesn’t matter, because at the start of the year I deliberately chose a variety marketed as performing well even in cooler summers like ours.

Trug full of veggies — Select crops that will thrive to reduce how much care they need

For my tomatoes, I opted for blight-resistant, grafted tomatoes, and they haven’t suffered any blight this summer. Grafted tomatoes have a bit more oomph behind them, and the plants positively exploded into growth, yielding plenty of disease-free tomatoes.

Careful variety selection takes little more than a half hour poring over the seed catalogs in winter. I like to peruse them with a cup of tea in hand, in front of the fire. It’s a blissful interlude that fires up the excitement for the coming growing season.

Revive Old Potting Mix

Potting mix is not cheap, so it’s great to be able to get another season out of it! It only takes a few minutes to revive old mix into new, saving another trip to the garden centre to buy more.

First pick out the worst of the roots and other detritus, then add a few handfuls of organic fertiliser. Mix it all together, then bag it up ready to use in containers again next year. Make sure to grow plants from a different crop family to avoid transferring any pests or diseases that might be lurking.

Harvesting beans — Keep picking to keep those pods coming

Harvest Regularly

With super-prolific vegetable garden stars like beans, regular picking actually saves you time because the plants produce more when you pick them regularly, meaning you need grow fewer plants – so that’s less time spent tending and watering. I spend anywhere from two to ten minutes twice a week simply walking through the vegetable garden and gathering what’s ready. This keeps crops coming so I’m getting the most harvests and missing nothing. It’s a small investment of time but ensures that by the end of it I’ve always got a trug of goodies to take inside.

Brassica seedlings — As soon as you pull up a crop, plant a new one

Replant Quickly

Keeping the soil covered with crops means not just more harvests, but less weeding, so as soon as one crop’s finished get the next straight in the ground!

When pulling out the old crop, if they have tough stems like broccoli you can help them to break down quicker by chopping them up with a spade. This takes mere moments but saves so much effort sieving compost or picking out larger, undecomposed bits later on.

Before replanting, add some organic matter such as compost to the soil to help replenish the nutrients taken up by the last crop.

Speedy Weeding

Spending a few minutes weeding regularly saves lots of time later on. About once a week, I go out with a hoe and bucket and engage in a little meditative weeding. Honestly, I rather enjoy it, because there aren’t that many weeds to hoik out, and the end result – tidy beds and clean, clear soil between plants – is always pleasing! It rarely takes me more than ten minutes each time.

Top up mulches of organic matter at least once a year. As well as feeding the soil, mulches also bury weeds and weed seeds, reducing how many can break through the soil surface.

Adding mulch to soil — Don't waste time and effort digging - just pile mulch on the soil surface instead

Quit Digging

I’m not a big fan of digging. All of my growing areas were started by simply laying down cardboard and then piling compost and other organic materials over the top. This is known as ‘no-dig’ or ‘no-till’ gardening. It saves the effort and hours of toiling with a spade, and gives a clean, weed-free bed to plant into.

Easy Watering

In my greenhouse, I’ve saved time watering by using homemade ollas. With these in place, I’ve only needed to water once a week. I water directly onto the soil surface, but then also fill up the ollas, which helps to stretch out the period between waterings, saving valuable time. A good, thorough watering, made by dipping the watering can in the water barrel each time rather than waiting for it to drain from the tap, makes this super quick.

Sunchoke flowers — Jerusalem artichokes are as stunningly gorgeous as they are low-maintenance and tasty

Pick of the Perennials

I’m increasingly sold on perennial vegetables because they take so little effort to maintain. My asparagus bed is taking shape nicely and I expect to harvest spears for the first time next spring, as some of the plants are now big and bulky enough to take that.

I also planted Jerusalem artichokes, but they have been a bit of a shock if I’m honest! I went away for a few weeks last month and during that time they went from 8ft (2.4m) tall to around 12ft (3.6m), towering over the entire vegetable garden, lolloping in an ungainly fashion! They’ll need to be relocated to their own little corner away from the vegetable garden so I can more easily manage their ungainly growth - but one thing’s for sure, there’ll be some fantastic tubers to unearth come winter.

Most fruits are also perennial: think blueberries, raspberries, currants, and tree fruits. They provide a generous harvest of fruits for no more than an annual pruning and a top-up of mulch in winter.

Nasturtiums — Self-seeded nasturtiums need next to no care

Flower Power

I see my fair share of pests, but they’re rarely a major problem, and I’m certain that’s because of the flowers packed in around my vegetable garden. Those flowers attract all sorts of beneficial bugs, some that help with pollinating crops like beans, others that prey on pests, and a few, like hoverflies, that will do both!

Self-seeding flowers like poached egg plant and nasturtium are a real time-saver, needing little more attention than just pulling out the odd plant to keep things orderly. Other annual flowers like marigolds need to be sown each spring then planted into position, but once they’re established all you really need to do is deadhead old flowers to encourage more.