Do you need a low-maintenance garden to fit your lifestyle? Reap an abundant harvest with less work by growing these crops.
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Do you go to your garden for a timeout from this fast-paced world? Gardening is a healthy hobby that can offer respite from the demands of modern life. However, it can also become a source of stress instead of solace. Like when the beloved garden is overtaken by weeds.
If you need a gardening strategy that matches your busy lifestyle, then you’re ready to focus on the following crops for a low-maintenance garden.
Annual Crops for the Low-Maintenance Garden
Let’s start with some vegetable crops that will help you fall in love with your garden again. Set-it-and-forget-it crops have a long season, don’t need a lot of babying, and are generally harvested all at one time.
The most ideal set-it-and-forget-it crops store well, too, which means you don’t have to process them right away.
Sweet potato harvest
Ideal Annual Crops: Garlic, Onions, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squash
These crops can go into cold storage for up to 8 months or so. Because of their longevity, there is no need to worry if you can’t use them up right away.
Check out the book Root Cellaring for proper storage techniques for each type of fruit or vegetable. Or, get the plans to build your own root cellar.
Pretty Good Annual Crops: Asparagus*, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Leeks, Tomatoes**, Watermelon
These crops have a long season. Since they need some attention after harvesting, however, they aren’t as ideal as the list above. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and leeks need refrigerated and have varying storage lengths.
Watermelon can remain in cold storage (whole) for 2-3 weeks. After that you’ll need to preserve them.
*Asparagus is a perennial rather than an annual. But since I’m talking about low-maintenance vegetables, I have to mention this easy-to-grow crop. Plant it once and get years of harvests! It’s in the pretty good category because it needs to be eaten or processed soon after harvesting.
**Tomatoes: Grow a determinate variety to get a bumper crop that is harvested all at once. Sit tomatoes out at room temperature for 2-3 days, then process after that. I like to freeze tomatoes in small batches until I have enough to make sauce. Try the San Marzano tomato—an heirloom that is excellent for making sauces.
Grow a garden that’s both productive and manageable with my Complete Garden Planning System, which includes practical tools for planning your season from seed to harvest.
Herbs for the Low-Maintenance Garden
If you’re looking for the ultimate low-maintenance crop that doesn’t mind being ignored completely, herbs are it.
Ideal Herbs: Chives, Oregano, Thyme
These herbs are perennial. Planted once, they come back every year without any work on your part. They are also easy to use in the kitchen. If you live in hardiness zones 7-10, you may also want to grow rosemary.
Fresh herbs are potent sources of nutrients, so adding just a tiny bit to meals can have a healthful effect. Try adding a handful of diced chives to mashed potatoes, fresh oregano leaves to pasta or pizza sauce, or fresh thyme leaves to rotisserie chicken or vegetable soup.
I love having these herbs right outside my kitchen door when I’m making dinner!
Prune them in late spring and again around August to about 5 inches of growth to keep them going indefinitely.
For more information on these herbs, see:
Chive blossoms
Pretty Good Herbs: Basil, Cilantro
Although these annual herbs need to be sown annually, I still enjoy growing them. That’s because they are just as beloved by the pollinators and beneficial insects as they are loved by me!
Stick basil sprigs (along with sprigs of oregano, rosemary, and thyme) in a glass of water on the kitchen counter. Simply change the water every couple of days. After a while, they will grow roots which can be planted back out in the garden!
Cilantro is one of my favorite flowers in the garden.
Are you looking for more strategies to grow food with the time you have? You’ll find loads of information just like this in my award-winning book, The Suburban Micro-Farm.
Fruits for the Low-Maintenance Garden
Fruit crops keep giving year after year with very little maintenance. Simply prune the trees or shrubs one or two times a year, and boost fertility once a year by adding compost or other organic matter.
Know your fruit’s harvest window and make sure you’re around for it!
Ideal Fruit Crops: Apples, Citrus Fruits, Grapes, Pears
The above fruits have a long storage life and require little processing after harvest.
Strawberries harvested from the garden
Pretty Good Fruit Crops: Berries, Pawpaws, Plums
Berries are prolific and don’t need much coaxing to grow (Hello, aronia berries!). However, they are highly perishable. Be ready to pop them in the freezer soon after harvesting.
If pawpaws or plums grow well in your area, they are reasonably low-maintenance choices. Find varieties of fruit that are (1) appropriate to your location, and (2) known to store well.
Cherries are my absolute favorite fruit, but I didn’t have the heart to list them here. That’s because cherries must be pitted before they can be frozen or dehydrated, and it is a fairly arduous, tedious process.
See my articles 5 Steps to Planting Fruit Trees and How to Build a Fruit Tree Guild for more information.
Tips for a Successful, Low-Maintenance Garden
Although this set-it-and-forget-it garden is sure to bring you loads of delicious satisfaction, here are a few things you can do to be more successful.
#1: Spend 15 minutes a day in the garden.
Think of this time as an observation period. If you follow my monthly garden planning suggestions or my 6 tips for success, you know that I am very protective of this 15 minutes a day.
Imagine spending 7 minutes before work (with coffee) and 8 minutes after work (with favorite happy hour beverage) walking through your garden. It’s not only relaxing, but it will help you stay connected to your garden even if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on it.
You may get to enjoy your apple tree in bloom or notice that the asparagus is ready to harvest earlier than expected. It ensures you don’t miss out on the essential reasons for having a garden!
This short daily visit helps you practice being in the garden, which is just as important as the doing!
#2: Mulch well.
If a low-maintenance garden is what you’re after, mulch the garden after planting to keep the weeds at bay.
Here are my tips for mulching.
#3: Stagger harvest windows.
As you decide what to plant in your low-maintenance garden, keep in mind each crop’s harvest window. It may not be a good idea to have multiple crops coming to harvest at the same time.
At the original Tenth Acre Farm, I planted black raspberries, cherry trees, currant bushes, and strawberries in my edible front yard. It was gloriously beautiful and productive, but all of these fruits come to harvest at the same time! It was quite the whirlwind to keep all the fruit from going to waste, and I don’t feel I was able to fully enjoy the gifts of each fruit.
Consider how you will process the bounty. Often it’s the processing that takes more time than the growing!
This of course depends on your circumstances. For some people, batching multiple harvests at once, with the rest of the year “off” from harvesting, may be preferable.
#4: Get it on the calendar.
Once you’ve decided what to plant, get essential information on the calendar so you don’t miss important garden events. Write down planting, harvesting, and pruning windows for each crop so you don’t miss out.
If calendars and checklists help you stay organized, then you’ll love the FREE bonus materials that come with the purchase of my book The Suburban Micro-Farm: Modern Solutions for Busy People. You’ll get a seedstarting & planting worksheet, monthly checklists and calendars, and a harvest log.
Summary
When times get busy, our happy place (garden) can turn into a source of stress. However, the crops in this article will help you to have a garden AND eat the harvest, too. The low-maintenance garden is within your reach!
What crops do you grow in the low-maintenance garden?
READ NEXT:
- Create a Food Forest for Low-Maintenance, Edible Rewards
- Growing Perennial Crops as a Side Hustle
- How to Grow Black Raspberries
Deborah says
Grapes
Emma @ Misfit Gardening says
Great tips on low maintenance crops. I found Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), leeks and purple sprouting broccoli to be pretty fuss-free to grow. Squashes are always the best keepers for me if you cure the skins (and I keep the dogs away from them long enough!).
Amy says
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Dave Way says
Agreed on Sunchokes (called Topinambours here in France). But people need to be careful about eating too much as many are not able to digest the inulin sugar well. cooking them a ton helps. I use a pressure cooker, then squeeze the center out of the skins (which I discard), then use that mushy material in soupls or stirfries or dips, but usually diluted to avoid problems. There’s a reason they are nicknamed fartichokes.
but definitely fussfree. I put a row in a vacant lot down the street and they are 10 feet high with zero care all season. And no one steals them!
Matt Carroll says
Chives and thyme have to be the easiest of the easy. My whole yard grows garlic chives from me having a pot of chives on the deck that I literally ignored for a few years. They just went on and on.
Great post! 🙂
Oregano and rosemary have never overwintered in pots for me the way thyme and chives have. In the ground, those two seem much hardier so far.
Hyssop seems equally durable and easy, but not quite as universal as a spice….I’m not even sure what it’s for….LOL. I grow it for the tiny flowers. 🙂 I think it’s for tea maybe. It looks like a giant thyme, or lavender.
Onions are much trickier in terms of timing, but seem easy to grow if you get that right. Garlic seems easy too. Don’t overcrowd them unless you’re automating the water they get. They seem to tolerate dry spells much better with a little more than average space.
Dave Way says
I totally agree on herbs.
We have multiple rosemary bushes which are evergreen so you can pick some fresh all winter.
Mutiple types of parsley come in handy all season.
Chives die off but they do come back strong each year.
Cilantro/coriander, if planted in the fall, will go right through winter (here in Northern France anyway, where it goes to -10°C).
A bay laurel tree is a godsend. Free savoury leaves all year. Dry all your pruning to give to friends.
Cinnamon Basil is great. Not as tasty as sweet/large leaf basil. But bugs don’t touch it, it forms a big bush.
Several types of mint, enclosed to stop them taking over, are also useful.
Dave Way says
I can’t agree with pawpaws. not because of their level of care but because they have toxic compounds in them naturally, which make them an unhealthy choice for consuming any amount of.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22130466
“Pawpaw fruit contains a high concentration of annonacin, which is toxic to cortical neurons. Crude fruit extract also induced neurotoxicity, highlighting the need for additional studies to determine the potential risks of neurodegeneration associated with chronic exposure to pawpaw products.”
Doesn’t sound good!
Amy says
This is certainly an important fact to be aware of, but it does refer to “chronic exposure to pawpaw products”. Pawpaws are a seasonal fruit that are rarely a staple in anyone’s diet.
As a seasonal specialty, however, “Pawpaws are very nutritious fruits. They are high in vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper, and manganese. They are a good source of potassium and several essential amino acids, and they also contain significant amounts of riboflavin, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and zinc.” pawpaw nutritional information
Melina says
I’m in zone 6a too.however so far my thyme never comes back after the winter. Any ideas?
Amy says
A number of things come to mind. Did you read my article about thyme? Remember that thyme is a mediterranean herb that doesn’t like heavy clay soil, doesn’t like soil that doesn’t drain well, and doesn’t like harsh winters. Loosen the clay with compost soil, worm castings, maybe a sprinkle of greensand or gypsum. Make sure it is not in a low spot that will collect and hold water. Make sure it is protected from harsh winter wind, by mulch, or by planting it closer to a shrub or hedgerow.
Jackie says
It might be the variety, or you trim it back too harshly or don’t wait for it. I live in zone 3a and have a thyme plant in a pot in the ground (stays outside) that comes back every year.
One thing to know is that last years woody growth will be a starting point for new greenery. I have thought it was dead before and it has always kept going! To be honest I don’t have it completely understood yet, it has mostly grown there by neglect and luck, but it seems to me that leaving last years growth instead of cutting it back in the winter is a major help. It means new growth can stay sheltered from surprise late snows (which we get often, sometimes as late as April). Hope any of that helps you (or anyone else).
James joynt says
Suggest the American linden tree, also called basswood. Every part seems edible, use leaves in sandwiches instead of lettuce. Can eat ghem right off yhe tree snd throw into salads like spinach. Flowers and buds are nice snacks.