5 Tasks You Should Do Every Day in the Garden

A lot of people put off starting a garden because they assume it's just way too much work. But the truth is, in the garden, at any given time, you're only doing one of three planting, tending, or harvesting. And I worked out a system to keep a garden like this growing in just five minutes a day. In this video, I'm going to show you five simple tasks you can do every single day that only take about one minute so that you can see how the garden can fit into your life, no matter how busy you happen to be. Start the day with an early morning harvest. This can be right when you wake up. It can be when you come back in from driving carpool, or you're coming back in from a morning walk or just a midday break. But harvesting in the morning is the best time to cut from your plants. They've had time overnight to pull up moisture and sugars from the soil. They're at their sweetest, they're crispest. They're at their best early in the morning. So you want to go cut some. I love to connect my breakfast to my early morning harvest so that I'm motivated, even if I'm busy, even if I've got a lot to do, I can always still make time to run outside. Don't run with scissors. Walk with your pruners. To walk outside slowly, holding these pruners, cut myself in just a minute, enough greens to go in and make some breakfast. So let me show you what I cut this morning for my omelette. So I started out with some parsley. Parsley is, believe it or not, an incredible source of vitamin C, and I love adding it to my omelette. It gives it so much flavor. You can also make all kinds of chimichurris and sauces with fresh parsley. So I always grab that. The more you cut, the more it grows. I grab a little bit of thyme. This is a perennial herb. It's going to grow all year long. And I cut this to make some dressing and maybe to put into some salad for lunch. Next up, I'm going to grab one Swiss chard stem for my breakfast. I love this because the stems are crispy. You can chop them up like celery. And the leaves are so delicious in an omelette. Continuing on, I'm going to cut a broccoli leaf. So I'm still letting my broccoli produce, but I love putting broccoli leaves in in my omelets. It gives me all of the nutrients that are in broccoli, but you don't have to wait for the crown. And let's see if there's anything else. I might grab a little bit of green onion. I have some onions growing in between my broccoli. So I'm just going to come in here and cut a few green onions. And now I'm ready to bring this in and make some breakfast. Took less than a minute. I grabbed at least five different vegetables I'm going to put into my breakfast. I'm going to get all the nutrients and the goodness, and it just took me one minute. Now I'm ready to go make some food. Now, while you're out here in the morning and doing your quick harvest, you're just going to do a quick water check. So this is a little tending check. You're going to make sure that your soil is staying moist. You're going to put your finger down to, like that first little knuckle and be sure that the soil is not dry at that level. You can have your watering hose ready to go. You can have a little watering can or if you've got an irrigation system ready to turn on. But don't water until you do the check. I love to just come out here, stick my finger in the soil as I'm grabbing my harvest for breakfast. And we've had a ton of rain here, so there is no need to water. But just do that check while you're out grabbing your food. And you can just turn on the irrigation, run the hose a little bit while you harvest your breakfast and then go about your day knowing that your garden got taken care of and it's not getting dry. So midday, if you're working from home or you're at home on the weekend, or if you're back from work later in the day, this is the perfect time to head on into your garden for a second harvest. But here you're thinking less about what you're going to eat immediately and thinking more about keeping the garden cut for preserving. So at this point, it's less about harvesting something at its prime, being super sweet or super crisp because you're going to be preserving it for later. So, for instance, I've got some radishes here that I could just come and grab right in the middle of the day, bring into the kitchen and rinse out for pickling. I could also come and grab some of my perennial herbs, things like oregano or rosemary or sage. Cut some extra stems because I know I'm going to bring them in and store them and hang them to dry for winter. I could also find other things that I know I'm not going to eat immediately, but I don't want to go to waste. So anything like peas that are hanging on the vine or extra cauliflower things that I can see that are going bad, I can just come out, do a quick grab, get them into the kitchen, cool them off so that I can start to use them later in the evening and store them for later use. So these little midday harvests, they don't have to be big, but they just slowly build your pantry one day at a time. This one day at a time idea is exactly what I talk about in my book Five Minute Gardener. If you haven't read it yet and you're into this idea of just gardening five minutes at a time, you can grab it right below this video. Next up, at the end of the day, say after dinner, you've cleaned up from the meal, you're just going to take one more little stroll through the garden. You're going to bring some pruners, some twine, and a little package of seed. So first up, you're just going to give a little bit of support to any plants that need it. So things like these sugar snap peas. When I see this tendril just hanging out here, I can just come.