What To Plant For The Absentee Gardener

You want a vegetable garden, but you can only get to it once a week or less. No problem, it can totally be done!

A friend of mine recently explained that his family has a cottage with some land, and that he would like to plant some vegetables there - but he’s only there once a week or even less sometimes. So his question was, “what things can I grow without needing to being there all the time?” This is a great question, and it’s applicable to all gardeners because, while many of us do not have family cottages at our disposal, it is still very useful to know that there are some crops that can be grown with very little work or maintenance so long as the right steps have been taken at the outset to ensure success.

A low-maintenance garden is a possibility for anyone that want to learn a few basics about gardening with organic mulch. I should know - I grow one every year!

Assumptions

One of my pet peeves with giving advice to people about gardening is that sometimes they come back to me after a season, and say that they did exactly what I said, and none of it worked. I can take some of the blame, because my advice is often given briefly, in conversation - and because of that, I cannot cover every little detail. I also tend to make the mistake of assuming that the person I’m giving the advice to will do some reading, or at least watch a couple videos of mine to get more detail - or maybe even explore the ideas further out of sheer curiosity. In any case, for the purpose of the “absentee gardener” I have identified three categories of garden plant according to how much maintenance they require. These should do the job, assuming that the gardener has good soil , good sun, lots of mulch, and has read at least one solid book about gardening¹.

1. Plant and leave

Some things are so easy to grow that they can literally be stuck in the ground and left for an entire season to grow without any maintenance at all. Potatoes are a perfect example of this type of plant.