So just how much food can be raised in 10 minutes?
We tend to measure our gardens by the square foot – there's even a square foot garden guru, a PBS host and books on the subject. Recommendations of garden footage accompany garden tillers descriptions. Size apparently matters: one of the first things gardeners mention to one another is how much space they tend.
Yet there's no mention of people's most precious commodity – time. The reality is, when a person decides to garden, they envision a space but have no idea how much time that garden will require. That got me to thinking: just how much could I grow using only 10-minutes when the weather was fit to work outside? And I don't mean doing the dirty little 10 minutes-a-day average trick that would mean 70 minutes a week over the season. I mean, hey, I've got 10 minutes, the weather is good, I'll go do some gardening; what exactly would come out of such a plot?
It makes logical sense. Most gardeners don't have the time to spare. Let's face it, we live hectic lives and many gardeners like the idea of growing their own food, but don't want to live every spare minute in their gardens after working all day. That's why I hear way too many stories of people starting gardens, tilling up some measurable space, planting it, then by August weeds have taken over because they over estimated the time commitment needed for the space they tilled. They either scale down their space the next year or abandon gardening altogether because they remember the noxious unsightly weeds.
So how much can grow in a 10 minutes using nothing but hand tools? I'll be sure to let you know . . . maybe.
We tend to measure our gardens by the square foot – there's even a square foot garden guru, a PBS host and books on the subject. Recommendations of garden footage accompany garden tillers descriptions. Size apparently matters: one of the first things gardeners mention to one another is how much space they tend.
Yet there's no mention of people's most precious commodity – time. The reality is, when a person decides to garden, they envision a space but have no idea how much time that garden will require. That got me to thinking: just how much could I grow using only 10-minutes when the weather was fit to work outside? And I don't mean doing the dirty little 10 minutes-a-day average trick that would mean 70 minutes a week over the season. I mean, hey, I've got 10 minutes, the weather is good, I'll go do some gardening; what exactly would come out of such a plot?
It makes logical sense. Most gardeners don't have the time to spare. Let's face it, we live hectic lives and many gardeners like the idea of growing their own food, but don't want to live every spare minute in their gardens after working all day. That's why I hear way too many stories of people starting gardens, tilling up some measurable space, planting it, then by August weeds have taken over because they over estimated the time commitment needed for the space they tilled. They either scale down their space the next year or abandon gardening altogether because they remember the noxious unsightly weeds.
So how much can grow in a 10 minutes using nothing but hand tools? I'll be sure to let you know . . . maybe.
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