Josh’s productive patch

Here’s how to keep your patch in peak production, even when you’re busy, writes JOSH BYRNE

It’s no secret that I love spending time in the vegie garden. I regularly shoot stories for Gardening Australia TV in my patch, and I’m prone to posting proud vegie moments on Instagram, but with a busy life outside the media, people often wonder how I find time to keep it up.

My life is very full, it’s true, as it is for a lot of people these days. In between filming and writing, I run a landscape and urban design practice, contribute to various boards and advisory panels and, most importantly, I have a young family. With all of this on the go, I find myself juggling priorities on a daily basis.

The simplest answer to the question of how I find time is that I make it a priority. Keeping a productive garden is more than just a hobby for me, it’s part of my lifestyle, and the rewards are significant. In addition to the obvious returns of having nutritious food, there are many other benefits, too. Growing food provides you with a sense of connection to where you live – it’s grounding, it’s good exercise and it’s great fun. That said, productive gardening does require time and effort to get the results you want, and when time is tight, you need to be clever with how you plan, prepare and manage your time to make sure it doesn’t all become overwhelming.

Here’s my game plan for keeping my patch pumping, despite all of the other important things I have going on.

PLAN AHEAD 1 AND PRIORITISE

Gardening is highly seasonal so it’s easy to plan and develop routines around it, such as setting aside time to prepare and plant out garden beds at the beginning of each season, or pruning fruit trees and vines at the right time of year. The activities that take a bit of time can be planned well in advance. The same goes for scheduling time for preserving your produce, if that’s what you want to do.

OPPOSITE AND ABOVE

Regular watering is a must for healthy crops, and it pays to find a few minutes each day in the garden to attend to weeds, pests and fertilising.

2 KEEP ON TOP OF GARDEN TASKS

Categorise jobs into short, medium and longer tasks so you can complete your garden tasks within the time you have available. This is a great way to keep on top of things. For example, tying up tomatoes only takes 5–10 minutes if you do it every week, but if you leave it for weeks it becomes a much bigger job and the plants suffer. Liquid-fertilising hungry crops might take 10–15 minutes and should be done every 2–4 weeks. If left too long, plants can become stunted and never fully recover. A pruning or replanting job might take an hour or so, but it needs to be done on time or you will miss the season. Trying to do all of these tasks at once can be overwhelming, but when you break it down and spread out your various gardening jobs, they become much more manageable.

3 STOCK UP ON SUPPLIES

Make sure you have resources on hand, including tools, twine, fertiliser and organic pest and disease control products, so there’s nothing to stop you doing what needs to be done. I always keep my shed organised so everything I need is easy to find. Taking the time to reorganise your shed or storage space so you can easily get on with gardening is an investment that will soon be repaid.

4 GET TO IT!

Planning is important, but don’t use it as an excuse to put things off. Successful gardens depend on frequent engagement. Regularly spending small amounts of time in the garden leads to better results than doing longer sessions less often. When life gets really busy for me, sometimes I go for weeks with limited gardening time, when I only have 20–30 minutes each day. I do things like watering, tip-pruning, feeding, weeding, harvesting and sowing seed. This small time investment ensures my vegie garden continues to produce week after week, and it keeps me feeling good.