Conquer Gardening Overwhelm With These 5 Strategies

Now that our snow has finally melted and my soil is workable, a plethora of gardening tasks have immediately jumped to the top of my to-do list, and there's a lot more to do this spring compared to recent years. With established garden sites, spring start-up routines can be streamlined pretty well, but now I find myself starting again from scratch with a massive garden site and no infrastructure. I admit that I had forgotten how overwhelming this stage of gardening can be! Since this is the same state that a lot of my students are in when they join our Seed to Table course community, I wanted to take some time to highlight some specific strategies you can use to conquer gardening overwhelm as you start up your growing space this spring.

The task of removing this grass-filled chokecherry patch was overwhelming at first, but conquerable in stages.

Like an unkept chokecherry patch that's overgrown with quackgrass, we'll need to break down feelings of overwhelm one step at a time.

Write It Down

While our brains have an amazing capacity for information, we can only remember about 3 things in our working memory. If you want to remember any more than this, you'll need to resort to memory tricks and keep the list cycling through your brain constantly so the record stays fresh and accurate. Whenever I attempt this, I seem to generate more unnecessary stress, and this comes during busy periods that are probably already a bit stressful. It's not helpful. What I need to do instead is write down everything somewhere. This way, the information doesn't have to cycle through my brain constantly and I don't have to worry that something important might be forgotten.

When I write down my problems and upcoming tasks, it helps to use some structure, especially when collaborating with a group of people. For this structure, I draw upon the same categories that I used to lead problem-based learning projects in my earlier years as a teacher. These categories have never failed to break down the biggest problems into bite-sized tasks that are more realistically tackled. They are "What We Know", "What We Need to Know", "What We Need to Do", and for the sake of confidence building..."What We Have Done".

Here's a look at our task management board as it sits this week.

This list is going to be changing constantly as some tasks are completed and new unknowns enter the picture, so it needs to be flexible. Currently, I'm using a whiteboard for my planning space with dry-erase magnets for my list items. I really appreciate the dry-erase magnets because they make it easy to edit the list items and shuffle them from one category to another as needed. This can all be done digitally with task management boards like Trello or Asana, but every time I start the same process digitally, it gets forgotten in the digital world. The white board exists with me in the real world. I am reminded of it daily, it's kind of fun to shuffle the task labels around by hand, and it's easy to discus the list items with family members.

Get Clear About Your Priorities

Once all of your tasks and questions are written down, you'll realize that you can't possibly accomplish everything on list at the same time. Some tasks will need to wait until a certain time of year, others can only follow previous tasks, and some days, you'll have plenty of eligible tasks, but not enough time to complete them. The key to overcoming the overwhelm of any long to-do list is to rank the list from most important to least important. This ranking will tell you the most logical place to start.

So what should be done first? At this time of year, the biggest pressure comes from our spring planting deadlines. Seeding, potting up, and transplanting all need to happen on schedule to execute our garden plan properly and get the most from our growing space. There is a bit of wiggle room with these dates, but if we let something like our tomato planting get postponed for a month, we're saying goodbye to most of our tomatoes for the year. We also have strict deadlines with the crops we grow for a fall harvest. For example, our fall carrots must be planted by the end of June in order to still have enough heat and light to fully mature before they freeze in the fall. If I only seed our fall carrots in the middle of July, they'll still be so tiny when I need to harvest them in fall that I might as well not even bother.

The fall carrots just planted in these beds had to be planted by the end of June to mature before winter.

Next in line, we have tasks that will help us get ahead. These are jobs that we know we'll have to do at some point in the coming weeks, like gathering equipment, spreading compost, eradicating weeds. It's great when some tasks have flexible timing because I can squeeze them in when there's nothing else urgent that needs to be done. The trick is to not leave any of these tasks so late that they become urgent. For example, I want to move a greenhouse to our new property and set it up before winter so that it is fully functional next season. This work doesn't need to happen right away so it can slide to the bottom of the list for now and fill time when I have it. I just need to make sure that I don't leave this greenhouse job so long that I miss my opportunity to work when the ground isn't frozen.

I'll be moving this greenhouse to our property this summer, but it's not the priority right now.

Swap Working Time With Waiting Time or Hired Time

Sometimes the list of urgent tasks is simply too long to get through and that's when a time swap comes in handy. When we face tasks in the garden that are going to require a lot of our time, it's often possible to replace them with a different action that accomplishes the same goal with waiting time or hired time instead of your working time.

Let's look at an example to illustrate this time swapping option. When it comes to changes to the landscape, we often have a choice between whether we are going to make them happen fast with lots of labour or slowly with lots of patience. Killing grass is one of these changes. It takes a huge amount of labour to thoroughly eradicate invasive grass from a garden site IF I choose to do it quickly by removing it all by hand. If I swap that working time for waiting time, I can instead cover the grass with a light-blocking tarp and just wait for the grass to die. The grass killing won't happen fast this way, but the big benefit is that it won't take my time in labour, and this frees up a lot more time to tackle other things on my to-do list.

Our new market garden plot is thoroughly covered with tarps and landscape fabric right now to kill the grass.

A peak under the tarp this spring reveals the grass. It was tilled lightly in fall and tarped briefly until the first snow.

It's a real pleasure to know that all that grass is dying without any attention from me, so my tarps are one of my most prized pieces of gardening equipment. I can't solve all of my problems with tarps though.

Sometimes, there's a lot of work to do and it doesn't make sense to wait or devote a huge amount of work time to a task. In cases like this, I've learned to be more willing to hire out the work. Often I deliberate for a while about spending the money to hire out a task related to my garden, but I'm always thankful I did once the job is done. We've already hired out a couple of big jobs on our new property. It contained over 400 row feet of neglected sour cherry shrubs when we moved in. I could have spent the entire summer chopping and digging these out by hand and it wouldn't have cost me anything other than time, but an entire summer of time is valuable too. Instead, we opted to hire a guy with a drum mulcher who took out the entire patch and more in less than 4 hours. It cost us $1700 but gave me an entire summer of time to spend in other areas. If I had done this work with my own two hands, it would have been like paying myself something like $4 an hour for the entire summer.

Purchased compost is another form of hired time. Most gardeners create their own compost. I do too and I don't discourage this practice, but I don't attempt to create all of the compost I need when starting up a new site because it's not a great use of my time. For example, I ordered 10 cubic yards of finished compost to start up our new garden this spring. It cost me $700, but no time. Yes, I could collect yard waste from neighbours all year long and maybe avoid buying any compost, but I would need to gather 100 cubic yards of raw organic matter, find a space large enough to organize the composting process, and finally screen the finished product. After all that work, I'd finally have the same 10 cubic yards (Yes. The volume shrinks that much during the composting process) of finished compost that I purchased, but I probably wouldn't have any energy left to spread it on my garden.

Eliminate Repetitive Tasks

Before I get into this one, I'll admit that I do appreciate some repetitive tasks. Amidst all the thinking and reading I do throughout a typical day, it can be nice to carry out a simple repetitive task that doesn't require much thinking or reading. Tasks like this can build confidence, give us a sense of purpose, and even be somewhat therapeutic. The downside of these repetitive tasks is that they can also suck precious time from our schedule and prevent us from moving forward in other areas.

Let's look at a couple of common examples where repetitive tasks can be eliminated. One task that's requiring regular attention from me right now is seed starting. Seed starting adds a whole new element of control to our vegetable growing which I really appreciate, but the fragile little plants do require a fair bit of babying. Life is more unsettled than usual for me right now so I didn't feel like I could be a great seedling parent at the moment. Therefore, I'm keeping my seed starting to a minimum this spring. I can buy more seedlings this year when possible, or even avoid growing some crops to reduce my seed starting time. Hand watering is another huge time suck. In a pinch, I'll use hand watering temporarily if it's the difference between a plant dying or surviving, but each time I do this, I'm quickly reminded of how annoying it is to take on this hand watering responsibility. My time is far more valuable spent building an automated irrigation system than it is standing in my garden holding a hose. That's why I've promised myself that I won't transplant or direct seed anything in my new garden until my drip irrigation system is set up this spring.

Drip lines can distribute water to my plants far better than I ever could and they require almost none of my time.

There are opportunities to eliminate repetitive tasks almost everywhere you look in your garden. It could be in the way you handle your soil, how you organize your tools, or even the way you move around your garden space. When you start to notice these inefficient behaviours and apply strategies to eliminate them, it can feel pretty darn good. Plus you set yourself up to grow more with a lot less work!

Trim the Excess and Do Less

Vegetable growing is inherently complicated. We tend to think of it as one activity, but that activity is overseeing the growing of many different crops that all have unique planting, maintenance, and harvesting requirements. The truth is vegetable growing is far from one activity, so forgive yourself if you're ever feeling overwhelmed. There can be a lot to keep track of. That's why we need to be disciplined about not making anything more complicated than it needs to be. We can combat excess complexity with a touch of discipline.

The first step to take is to simplify your garden plans, even to the extent that you feel your simplification is radical. Years ago, I was frustrated by all the unique trellising requirements for different crops. I saw that I was accumulating a lot of trellising equipment and lots of it was only being used for one crop. I made a choice then to figure out a portable trellising framework that would last forever and work to support every crop that I wanted to trellis. That was about 8 years ago, and I still use the same trellising frames for everything. It's so much simpler this way and I don't have any excess equipment laying around.

These same trellis frames are now used for growing beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons in the field.

Crop selection is another area where most home growers can benefit from a little more discipline. Seed catalogs have an overabundance of seed options for us to choose from, but we don't need to grow them all. If I fill my tomato beds with two varieties instead of ten, I can produce the same amount of food with a lot less mental energy.

Sometimes we also need the discipline to just do less. You can maintain that dreamy vision of how your garden space will look and feel someday, but relieve yourself of the pressure of having to build it all instantly. This is one of the hardest areas for me. Once I have designed a growing space and start to imagine how beautiful and productive it will be, it's hard to accept the space with anything less than that ideal vision. In my younger days, I would make change happen faster by working harder, but these days with a family and kids that need me in other ways, I need to pace my work more evenly. This compromise means that some things on my gardening list won't get checked off as early as I would like. The flip side is that I will have more time to enjoy the progress along the way.

One way that I'm doing less this season is by starting only 30 of the eventual 80 beds that will make up my market garden area. I've literally drawn a line in the soil and committed to not expending any energy to develop beds past this point. Only the area outlined with yellow in the photo below will be prepared for growing this season. The half on the right will just rest under the tarp. This garden trimming effort will significantly reduce my work load this spring and give that grass on the right sufficient time to die, making my start-up work on that side a lot easier next year.

Only the area outlined in yellow will be actively prepared for growing this season.

A mantra that helps me make compromises like this is "less is more". This saying reminds me that less of one thing allows room for more of something else. The hustle culture of our age preaches that "more is more", but there can't be more of everything at the same time. I only have so much productive time each day. The truth is that "more is burnout", "more is neglect", "more is sacrifice".

We typically use the word trim as a verb when talking about cutting or removing something and these ideas can feel negative sometimes when they are associated with loss. Interestingly though, the word trim can also mean "to master". So the next time you feel reluctant to trim the excess in your garden, consider that you might actually be on the path to garden mastery.

Where Will You Start?

I've shared five strategies today that will all help you overcome overwhelm, whether you use them separately or in combination. Here they are again to review:

• Write it Down

• Get Clear About Your Priorities

• Swap Working Time for Waiting Time or Hired Time

• Eliminate Repetitive Tasks

• Trim the Excess and Do Less

I'm confident that if you follow these recommendations, you will start to feel a lot more comfortable with the gardening tasks that lie ahead for you, and ... you can even start right now! Just pick one of these suggestions and get to work. You may only be a few minutes away from overcoming the overwhelm that you feel right now.