3 Ways to Start a New Garden Bed as a Busy, Tired Parent
You love the idea of having a garden for your kids to safely run around in. You can teach them how to grow their own food, and make a cozy sensory, sanctuary for them to grow up and burn off steam.
But, how do you manage to dig a new garden bed when you can’t even get to the bottom of the dish pile in one go?
I feel ya, kiddo.
Digging up a lawn to convert the space into a garden bed is not easy work. Do it wrong and you’ll have a lifetime of maintenance ahead, picking out grass from between plants. Doing that in North York clay soil, in the summer?! You might as well be digging in concrete. Add a few kids around your feet, or a toddler that no longer stays in one place, juggling nap times with your other household tasks, it’s overwhelming and unproductive.
3 Ways to Start a New Garden Bed as a Busy, Tired Parent.
No Dig Beds
Also doubles as an excellent way to hide online shopping boxes.
Digging at Night
Definitely gives the neighbours something to talk about.
Delegation
There’s always an opportunity to earn back money, but we can never earn back our spent time.
No Dig Beds
We cover this method in a full step by step article that you can read by clicking here.
Instead of digging up grass and committing your own time and effort, you set up a smothering system and let Mother Nature work her magic on behalf of you.
When you dig up sod, or till a new bed, it’s instant gratification. You can plant immediately. Doing this removes a lot of nutrients from the area and alters the soil structure and microbial makeup. A no dig method preserves these elements at the expense of time.
For this reason, and to capitalize on natural elements, this method is best used in the fall or late winter.
The no dig method doesn’t require any tools, everything could be done with your hands. Depending on the size of your garden bed plans, it can be laid out in mere minutes!
Digging at Night
This is how my garden beds were made before I learned of the no dig method. Once the kids were in bed, so too was the sun and occasionally, it would even be raining.
The pros of digging at night is the cooler temperatures, peaceful atmosphere, alone time (trust me, few will volunteer to join), and the continuous, uninterrupted period of time. Even the gentle, evening summer rains were a pro. They softened the hard clay and made digging easier.
The cons, it’s dark. And all the bugs seem to get more active at night. This was the biggest hurdle for me. As much as I love nature, gardening and encouraging my kids to explore and support bugs, I don’t like bugs. Worms even less. Gloves are an absolute must for me.
All the bug-filled activity though can teach you a lot about your soil and it’s health. Bugs each play key roles and have preferences to different environments. The same way a weed can be an indicator of soil type or compaction, a bug can also give you insight into the health of your soil.
My garden beds are teeming with pill bugs at night. These are notorious for removing heavy metals such as lead from the soil. Four years ago while digging beds at night I made the realization that we likely have a heavy metal situation. Fast forward to 2021, and the city has been doing soil tests in front of our lot. Testing for: lead contamination!
Darkness was the easiest problem to resolve. Headlamps; strap it onto your forehead and you have task light wherever you go. No wires, props or trying to hold a flashlight. Headlamps are easy to come by these days and in my experience they last a long time! They can be found at Canadian Tire, MEC, and Amazon.
Delegation
There is no shame in asking for help or disliking heavy digging.
Parents are physically taxed trying to keep up with kids and daily responsibilities. Often our own health takes a back seat. To pick up a shovel and start digging could land you with strained muscles, an abundance of aches, even injuries, which can lead to shorter patience.
The impulse to dig a new garden also coincides with nesting for many mothers. Assuming a healthy, active pregnancy there’s no reason why you can’t, but our dreams are often bigger then our capabilities at that stage of pregnancy. It’s one thing to take pride in not being able to walk after leg day pre-kids, but as a parent you don’t get a day off to recuperate.
If a garden chore can’t be done together and turned into an experience, then delegating to another party may be the route to take.
This can look like calling in a family member, neighbour or friend to either lend a hand or do it for you. There are many professionals out there like myself that will happily dig in the dirt all day. If this option sounds like the solution for you, let’s chat!
While you are prepping your new bed, don’t forget about establishing clear boundaries between the bed and the surrounding environment. I have covered how to keep kids from stepping into garden beds in this post.