Some folks don’t believe us when we tell them we are lazy gardeners. Anyone who’s been doing this for awhile is bound to figure out the easiest and laziest ways to do things. Today, we’re going to talk about one such technique that we call “chop and drop.”
When you harvest plants, there’s often a lot of excess. Obviously you’re harvesting a specific part of the plant, but there’s also often leaves or other bits that aren’t what you want. The non-lazy gardener will go through the effort to collect these things, often putting them through a composting process. We prefer not to do all that work, if we can help it!
What it comes down to is the composting process happens, whether you intentionally do it or not. Organics will break down, whether in a pile or on the ground. Our lazy selves have learned that if we just leave these organics to next spring, they will break down and we can just rake them back into our beds.
If you do this during the summer months, it can help knock down any weeds that might be growing in your walkways. We find this helpful as it’s yet one more area where we have to spend a bit less time. Weeding is our least favorite gardening task, so if there’s anything we can do to make it less work…we’ll do it!
Now, obviously this doesn’t work in all gardens, especially the garden with meticulously maintained walkways. This process is a bit messy, the leaves can become slimy and less than ideal to walk on while they break down. But, if you’re less concerned about aesthetics and your time is valuable to you, this is a great shortcut that easily gets organics in your soils with ease.
On the same hand, some gardeners might cut down or fully extract their plants from the ground prior to winter. We just leave them there, allowing the winter to thoroughly break apart the organics. The next spring, these plants are very easy to remove and our soil benefits from the added organics as well.
One of the better arguments “against” this method is that such things could harbor things like voles. What we’d say is that these pests are experts in survival, they don’t “need” your garden’s old leaves and branches to survive. Nature provides them with enough resources, whether you like it or not.
We probably should have mentioned this earlier this season, but we often run into conflicts with our timeliness and intent to discuss things “as they happen.” But, since many of you in warmer climates are still well into growing and harvesting, this one is still relevant!
