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I am on my third season as an avid home gardener and going the GYO route is extremely difficult.

Most people dont even begin to have the time or willingness to commit to such a venture. I have a small backyard garden and, even with the small number of plants I had, it consumed hours of work each day. Personally I think everyone should at least try to garden once in their life so they understand exactly how difficult it is. I have a greater respect for farming because of my struggles.

“...I am on my third season as an avid home gardener and going the GYO route is extremely difficult....”

Yes Sir!!! You are correct. It is no easy task and once you have it grown, you’ve got to put it up to preserve it which is also a lot of work. I’ve not done a garden in a couple of years now, but before that, I’ve done one every year for about 5 years. I found as I gained experience, some tasks became little easier, but it’s still a lot of work. And it does give you a deeper appreciation for the stuff you can just “pick up at the grocery store”. However, my homegrown stuff tasted soooo much better, especially when it’s freshly harvested.

Lettuces, onions, carrots, turnips grow themselves LOL!
..

Little weeding or fertilizing or bug killing, soil prep or watering needed.
I just plant the seeds in my poor clay untilled soil and give them an hour a week of work and harvest twice what I can eat from about a 12 x 12 garden.

I began gardening with these easy species and thought I’d move on to more difficult plants but these have made me such a lazy gardener..

I have a small backyard garden and, even with the small number of plants I had, it consumed hours of work each day.

Really? Really....?

Then I think you may need to take a gardeners class or something. I have a really large garden: Raised Beds-6 2'x12'; 5 4'x12'; 2 4'x8' and 2 2'x8'...AND a tilled area that is 30'x35'....

And even with all of that, I do not spend "hours of work each day" even during peak harvest time. I currently have over 100 broccoli plants growing, dozens of garlic plants; spinach and lettuce/greens/kale...carrots and leeks...and I MAY spend 2-3 hours a WEEK. I also have 432 seedlings started.

In the summer I will have over 50 tomato plants and a whole plot of purple hull peas...not to mention all the other stuff...

And even THEN I won't spend (averaged) over an hour per day...and we are still eating the peas, tomatoes and carrots I canned LAST year...and the pickles.

I think you may need to recalculate or get a little more efficient.

There’s a book called “Weedless Gardening” that might help a lot.

I cut down on weeding by putting down heavy-duty landscape fabric, and planting in holes cut in it. There are a lot fewer weeds, and they’re usually small. By about mid-summer the garden shades out new weeds pretty well.

Starting around June, most of my time in the garden is spent harvesting and hilling up. My strawberry patch is pretty small, but it still produces more than I can keep up with.

Growing your own is never as easy as buying it from the store, but it shouldn’t be quite as hard as you describe.

I do much the same thing as Ellendra except I use newspaper, cereal boxes and other compostables covered with leaves, grass clippings, straw and hay.

I cover the area around the plants completely including walk paths with the newspapers/cardboard stuff to a depth of about 6 or 8 sheets of newspaper. Overlapping generously. Then cover and fill with about 4-6” of leaves/clippings/hay. I occasionally have a weed break through but it’s a simple matter of pulling it, and covering that spot with some more paper/hay.

At the end of season it’s all broken down and tills in to the garden to provide organic matter for next years garden.

It’s a do it once and then just water and pick the produce. It’s almost like free food. Be sure to do it as soon as you till though to eliminate any extra work. We don’t even hill the garden anymore. It’s like walking through landscaping. It holds water much more efficiently too which is a help in the swelter we have here in the SE lately. Just save your papers and flat your cereal boxes and rake your leaves to store in black garbage bags. Sometimes I spread extra mulching material on the walk paths toward the end of the season as it’s already started to break down by the end of September.

Trust me. I do NOT weed my garden. That’s for the birds.

I do the same with my strawberry patch only I use exclusively cardboard boxes there and cover them with pinestraw. It looks like a landscaping bed filled with groundcover. Which it is. Except I got 25G of strawberries out of that landscaping bed last spring and summer.

Newspaper, mulch, soaker hoses, timers. It’s like the garden of ‘eatin’. We pick bucket fulls of stuff every morning and the picking and putting up is pretty much the only ‘work’ we do after the middle of April.

YMMV