Low maintenance, low effort crops?

Morning all,

I am still currently doing some 'big works' down my allotment plot (such as setting up the recycling area and water butt collection areas) and so I think I am going to skip growing crops which need that bit of 'extra' attention.

I was just wondering what crops can I plant in which take the least looking after after upon planting?

Next year once everything is in shape I will be able to grow more varieties!

Samuel

 

Watering is the big one (I am in a totally different climate but my father had an English allotment as I was a young man). Pests next, especially if you are organic. I would think corn would be the lowest maintenance for the most dramatic effect, but probably wrong.

My advice to you is to think of PVC pipe. If you go to a plumbing supply place rather than a DIY store the prices for pipe are very low (it is the fittings that add up) I would put in an irrigation system if you are busy. I love mine! It is based on 1/2 inch PVC supply lines ($2.80/20 foot) that have bell ends so fit into eachother (no connector fitting) and can bend in sweeping turns without breaking (a 90 in 8 foot say). You will need 3/4 pipe if a long drip system is used - but 1/2 to supply it should be fine.

I then used tiny drill bits and beginning at the end made holes where I thought they needed to be and then tried it, making bigger holes, or more, as it had water in it, to get it close to what I wanted to do. Then I bought 10 foot of black flexible line (like garden hose), cut it into 2 inch lengths and split down the length. These are put on the pipe at each hole and can be slid over the hole, or partly if careful, to regulate each drip/spray point, and then slid off the hole when not needed, but left in place - and they show you where the spray/drip points are.

Mine hook to my well pump - but I would use a gravity system if needed too. Also - use loops - make the system a circle so it is fed from both ends if it goes up one side and down the other. The pressure drops fast with length. The back has a lot less pressure. Buy lots of ball valves - here a 1/2 inch inline PVC ball valve is $1.50! Make that system where it can be focused where you want it.

 

Try a few rows of potatoes,once they show just run a hoe through now and again just to keep down the weeds, and when you have banked them,forget about them until you start to use them,as you us them you can then clean the ground as you eat them.

 

fileyboy's advice probably better. I spend about an hour a day watering even with my home made irrigation system so I focused on that. With it the bulk of the crops and berries do themselves, I just water isolated stuff and edges with buckets or a hose.

Throughout time in much of the Middle East, till very recently, the land was owned by the aristocracy (of a sort - headman a better word) and was worked with inheritable tenancy rights by sharecroppers. The division was 5 parts depending who supplied what.

Land
Labour
draft animal
seed
water.

If the peasant could hold back some of his share for seed he got a second share, if he could drive his own irrigation system (amazing systems used there, some huge projects, some keeping ditches to rivers, some working hand powered waterwheels........If he owned his own ox, mule, camel, buffalo....then he could be well off keeping 4/5 of the crop. A new peasant very poor getting 1/5 of the crop.

A different world there and then, but it illustrates the work of growing and is still something we can see applies to us.

 

Brassicas are usually good also, as you can plant them, and in most cases apart from a bit of weeding they get on with it themselves.

 

Why don't you just fill it with nasturtium? They'll grow without your help once established, and will smother any weeds while at the same time adding structure to the soil, and of course you can eat every part of the plant. When winter comes, they'll all die, and you can then just dig them in and the ground will be good to go for next year.