For many hobby gardeners, a flower bed should be primarily decorative, while a vegetable bed should be more useful. This often requires a lot of work. But you can make this work a lot easier if you create your garden bed in a low-maintenance way from the start.
How can you create a bed that is easy to care for?
An easy-care bed can be created by choosing plants appropriate to the location, ground cover, bark mulch and perennial vegetable plants. Mulching and targeted harvesting of individual leaves instead of entire plants also reduces the maintenance effort.
The location determines the plant selection
Of course you want to choose your plants according to your own taste. There is little objection to that. However, keep in mind that a water-loving plant in a dry location will need to be watered very frequently, and sun-loving plants in the shade will not bloom as desired. So choose the plants that feel comfortable there and you will get the most benefit with the least amount of work.
Planting ground cover plants
Where no plants grow, weeds thrive. If possible, leave no or only small areas in your bed free, then weeds hardly stand a chance. You can very well use so-called ground cover plants to fill gaps. They usually stay quite low, but spread out well. If necessary, they can also be cut back easily.
Cover a bed with bark mulch
Your bed will also be easy to care for if you cover it with bark mulch. This means fewer weeds grow there and the soil is kept naturally moist. This reduces the amount of watering required. Bark mulch is not only useful but also very decorative.
Tips and tricks in brief:
- choose plants appropriate to the location
- Planting ground cover plants
- Apply bark mulch
The easy-care vegetable patch
You can also mulch your vegetable patch. This means you don't have to water or weed there as often. However, only apply the mulch to the bed when the young vegetable plants are already emerging from the soil, otherwise the mulch layer will also make it difficult for them to grow.
You can harvest many plants throughout the summer if you don't cut off the whole plant straight away but just parts of it. This applies, for example, to chard and spinach, but also to so-called lettuce. Here they don't harvest heads but rather individual leaves. Another alternative are perennial vegetable plants.
Tip
Creating an easy-care bed requires just a little thought, but it saves you a lot of work.
