How much time...

How much time do you think you spend in the garden? I can only get out to mine on Thursdays and Sundays for the real nitty gritty stuff. I wish I had more time to play out there. I am going to make my spring work schedule soon and am curious how much time to block off.
Plus I'm getting 6 hens in the spring! I will need time to play with them, too!

I get about 20-30 minutes/day during the week, and then spend a good 4 hours both Friday and Saturday night in the garden.

I'd spend more of the weekend working on it ...if I had the time though, and if I wasn't restricted to non-daylight hours...... although the vampire gardening helps because I don't feel like I'm "robbing" time from my family (whose asleep )

I think I may put lights up in the garden so I can do some vampire gardening! There is so much I want to do but now that it's getting dark so early I don't get to after work.

Acara, since you are the Vampire Gardener, you need to replace the grim reaper with a vampire.

Also, make sure you have the proper teeth and black capes. And I guess it goes without saying that you can't grow garlic.

GK

I get 2-3 minute bursts throughout the day.
It all depends on how well the kiddos are playing. Lately there have been a lot of sticky burrs in the backyard, and that is cutting down on how long I have. Oh, and the fact that the 1 year old just discovered how to escape the backyard and make a break for the street!

Old Hippie wrote:Acara, since you are the Vampire Gardener, you need to replace the grim reaper with a vampire.

Also, make sure you have the proper teeth and black capes. And I guess it goes without saying that you can't grow garlic.

GK

I have never paid much attention to how much time I have been spending in the garden.
I think I spend more time looking at it than working in it. About two hours a week.

Old Hippie wrote:Acara, since you are the Vampire Gardener, you need to replace the grim reaper with a vampire.

Also, make sure you have the proper teeth and black capes. And I guess it goes without saying that you can't grow garlic.

GK

Yeah ... I avoid the garlic, and the sterling silver plant tags

CarolynPhillips wrote:


I have never paid much attention to how much time I have been spending in the garden.
I think I spend more time looking at it than working in it. About two hours a week.

What???? With all the stuff you do you only spend two hours a week??!!! Dang, Girl! You get so much more done than I do. Guess I need to pick up the pace a bit.

The minute the snow is gone and there is a patch of bare dirt outside I am out there. This working for a living thing really SUCKS! I have never actually kept track but I spend as much time out in the yard doing things as I can get away with......lots of time just puttering but loving it. Housework has to wait until there is a rainy day or winter time. (Anyone who is unhappy about that is quite free to do some dishes, laundry, scrub a toilet or tub, use a broom or a vacuum. I believe that if you think something needs to be done that is most likely God telling you to do something about the situation....and I don't mean delegate it to me.)

GK

Yep-yep, don''t like the way the house looks, don't let the door hit ..............

Building the beds and getting it started... more time than I want to think about. (It would have been less had I done true SFG beds.)

After that... No more than 15-20 minutes a day, if that, unless I just felt like hanging out with my plants, or was modifying something like adding new containers or re-configuring the irrigation. I typically puttered around before turning the water on, and after turning it off. I spent more time taking pictures than I did actual gardening. Late in the season it took a little longer because the pole beans liked to hide when I was going to harvest them.

acara wrote:Yep-yep, don''t like the way the house looks, don't let the door hit ..............

Was that lightning I just saw?

GK

Maybe I will just work a half day on Tuesdays. I would spend all day in the garden if I could. I thought opening my own salon would make me more money and I wouldn't have to work so much. HA! That's a good one! But I do love it.
My clients will just have to get over the fact that I won't be in all the time!

I did not include the time that I spend in the tomato greenhouse===I assumed it did not count as my garden=====I keep those records separated cause it is business.
Not everyone has 760 tomato vines to contend with in their personal gardens. do they?
I wouldn't want to add those tomato house hours up and scare the snot out of somebody and make them wonder if gardening was worth it.
Of course the actual construction of the garden takes more time in the beginning but after that its --- mostly watching.

do you have to count the amount of time you just upend a bucket and *sit* in your garden?

The amount of time that my garden needs me is astonishingly minimal.

The amount of time that I need my garden is pretty substantial.

LaFee wrote:
The amount of time that my garden needs me is astonishingly minimal.

The amount of time that I need my garden is pretty substantial.

That's T-shirt worthy !!!

acara wrote:

LaFee wrote:
The amount of time that my garden needs me is astonishingly minimal.

The amount of time that I need my garden is pretty substantial.

That's T-shirt worthy !!!

+1

I think we should spend at least an hour a day...
sitting in our SFGs in lawn chairs watching the neighbors as they rototill and weed their own gardens. It's like veggie soup for the soul.

LaFee wrote:
The amount of time that my garden needs me is astonishingly minimal.

The amount of time that I need my garden is pretty substantial.

Yep, that's me too! I'm thinking of adding a bench and bird bath under the Bradford pear trees so I can just sit, look at the garden and watch for weeds. If these trees were closer together, I'd put up a hammock. :-) This picture was taken April 2010:


Today, I'll spend time picking all the green tomatoes and peppers left hanging -- we're finally getting our first serious frost tonight.

pattipan

My first frost was last night -- didn't kill my flowers out front, but it put a hurtin' on them.

My veggies, however, and snug and warm in their little greenhouse.

We've got a patchy frost warning for tomorrow night.

Pattipan, with a beautiful set-up like that... can you set up a post for one end of the hammock and use a tree for the other end?

What is that white tree .... it's absolutely gorgeous (garden aint half-bad either ...j/k....LOL)

We don't have pretty trees like that down here

Looks like pear trees.

pattipan wrote:... I'm thinking of adding a bench and bird bath under the Bradford pear trees so I can just sit, look at the garden and watch for weeds. If these trees were closer together, I'd put up a hammock....

Silly me, I just assumed she was talking about the trees in the picture. Just kidding, this is the picture that Patti entered in the spring photo contest, and I still like it!

Those are Bradford pear trees and they are purely ornamental. The photo was taken last spring (boffer remembered!). The blossoms are gorgeous, but they smell like a dead animal. Before I discovered this, I thought I must have got some REALLY bad compost or something had died in my SFG! Right now the trees are covered with a gazillion little 1/2" squishy brown pears that only the starlings seem to like. The starlings drop the seeds in my boxes and I have to weed little pear trees out in the spring. I must say though...it's a very easy tree to grow from seed and it loves Mel's Mix!!

The hammock is a dream only. Did I mention our house (a.k.a. parsonage) is in the middle of our small town...between the bank drive-thru and the church? I may add the bench and bird bath, but the hammock would just be too visible to relax! I would probably have to deal with starlings dropping seeds...or worse -- haha!

pattipan

We had a pear tree on the farm where I grew up. I was very small at the time, but it seemed like the fruit were never quite right for eating. That or I just didn't like them, hard to say. It was really pretty, though. I liked the flowers, mostly white but the faintest ghosting of pink.

As for the highly visible hammock.... hmm. I see what you mean, but the rebel in me would want to try it anyway!

Starlings... our farm in NH was a stop on the starling migration route and for about 10 days, twice a year, we were pretty much deafened by the starlings that came through!! I don't recall problems with seeds dropped by them but I'm sure they were an issue.

Megan wrote:We had a pear tree on the farm where I grew up. I was very small at the time, but it seemed like the fruit were never quite right for eating.

I'm not sure if you (or your parents) knew this when you had the pear tree, but pears are best ripened off the tree. They are picked at full size, but still green, then ripened in a cool, dark place. We used to put them in apple boxes just a few layers. Check them frequently and remove any that go bad before they can affect the rest. They are much less grainy and sweeter if ripened off the tree.