How Do You Cut down Time Spent on Yard Work?

I actually love yard work as it is a great excuse to be outdoors. I don't have as much time for yard work as I used to, so I have started planting more shrubs and less plants, and mulching heavily around them to keep the weeds down. I put several layers of newspaper under the mulch and it works better than weed fabric. Instead of fussy annuals I plant hardy perennials and I save the annuals for pots. I use a small raised bed for tomatoes and herbs which is much easier to care for than a regular bed. I also get the kids involved and they have gotten pretty good at it. I never use chemicals.

I don't have flower beds, so weeding mostly consists of just zipping a weedeater in and out of spots the riding mower can't reach.
I do weed the vegetable garden by hand, but that's it. I find that keeping a cold beer within arm's reach makes the task much more pleasant.

I put money back into the California economy....I hire people for all of that stuff. If I want to spend time in the sun it's either swimming or lounging by the pool :)

We go out together as a family and work together. Cost is zero buckaroos. Sure it takes time but it is time together as a family. Do they complain and whine at times? Heck to the Yes!

So, we finish our project then go to the ice cream shop together and enjoy more time....TOGETHER.

Ok..ok..we kind of cheat. We have 5 chickens and they eat alot of the weeds. But there is more to our 1/3 acre lot than just weeds.

My husband has allergies and at times will wear those thin white masks over his mouth and nose. Totally helps.

Give everyone a job and get that yard looking nice :) Once a month keeps things looking decent...but not "Better Homes And Gardens" worthy. We are a busy family with lots of church and extra curricular activities. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I love beautiful flower beds. In someone else's yard lol. I hate lawn work. We have made a pact that when we retire we will have a plain yard with bushes across the front of the house and a few pots of flowers. So that lawn work consists of mowing and weedeater and once a year trimming the bushes. A friend said you will change your mind. But I won't we don't enjoy yard work and when we are retired it will still be hot sweaty work. So no I won't change my mind.

We had children. ;)

Our boys do much of the yard work, thank goodness! We live on several acres and it takes forever to do the yard! We have had goats and chickens before, and that took up some of the space to maintain, and for the past 12 years or so we've had a pig. Other than that, we just have to do the work.

I love garden work, and yes, some of it isn't fun and is time consuming.

My suggestion would be to go to your nursery and find low-maintenance plants native to your area. Native plants tend to be pest resistant and require less water and care. They also usually host beneficial insects and some varieties will spread and become ground cover.

Weeding works best in early spring when the ground is soft. If you want until it's warm and dry, it's twice as hard. I have a cottage garden-- my trick for weeds is to let natives flourish in those areas and make it harder for weeds to get a foothold. You can also pay your kids a penny a head for dandelion flowers if they like to pick and you don't have time to remove the entire plant. It will keep the seeds down. Have them picked before they go to seed.

re-think your garden. get rid of decorative flower beds, and fussy shrubs and trees. put in a wild flower garden, hardscaping and paths, vines and evergreens that don't require much watering, or tending.

lawn/ garden service costs depend on your region, but you can sometimes save a buck or two if you latch onto a neighbors. i.e. if they are sending a crew out to #3 elm street on tuesday, they can also do #5 elm on the same day.

As with housecleaning, these things tend to be cheaper if you get a regular service (sometimes year round, to gather leaves, winterize, remove snow etc), than if you opt for the occassional one time blitz.

Best,
F. B.

I cut down on time spent by doing as little as possible. Heh.

My husband and/or teen mows the grass. I trim back the hedges in front when necessary. I planted bulbs in the areas around the house because they require no ongoing care. A thick layer of wood mulch takes care of the weeds around the flowers.

I do not weed the lawn, I let dandelions and wildflowers grow rampant. The only things I occasionally have to pull up are thistles. My kids constantly have other kids over to play and the back yard is full of holes and bare spots. I have no intention of planting grass until the kids are grown.

I was just talking about the difference between my yard now and my yard at my old house. In the last house, I had time to plant pretty flowers, weed and water regularly. In the new house, all bets are off. The "flower" beds have flowering shrubs that take care of themselves aside from an occasionally pruning. If it doesn't last through a warm summer, without additional water, I rip it out and get something else that is native to the area. All of the borders are filled with evergreen shrubs or perennial flowering plants that require no maintenance for the most part. Oh and the beds are lined with weed fabric and are covered with bark mulch, so we don't get many weeds at all. It's awesome. I do pots for the flowers I like to add in spring and summer. I also do a veggie garden in our raised bed. It's all contained and controlled.

if you don't like gardening, i'd take out flower beds or anything else that needs to be mulched. put some perennial shrubs, or trees, in the problem areas. weeds are opportunistic and will rush to fill an open space, but if you plant something you want there and ignore the weeds, they slink away.
my local organic farmer told me that one of the hardest things he faced when he got certified was to ignore the weeds at his fence lines. when he quit spraying they all came roaring in, but after a few years they got totally nudged out by the good grasses he had planted in his fields.
i love my veggie and flower beds, but yeah, they do become a lot of work. i don't get too caught up in keeping 'em perfect-looking. i plant, put down fabric, then mulch, and only weed them during the season when it's rained and the ground gets like pudding and popping the weeds out is easy and gratifying<G>.
i'm way too cheap to hire anyone, and way too hippy to consider chemicals.
we're both getting up in age, and keeping up with the place gets a little harder every year. there are things we have to do (keep up with the fencing so the horses don't go on walkabout) and keep the trees that interfere with driving trimmed and reasonable. but i've told the husband that i don't really care if we have a groomed lawn. if the mowing and weed-whacking get overwhelming, we can let the woods take over most of it. i'll keep the pastures mowed as long as the old mares keep hanging on, but then they can go to forest too if it's too much work. i've told my aunt, who is in her 70s and lives in the desert, the same thing. why wear herself out keeping up the lawn and flower beds if it's taking away the pleasure of living in such beauty? let the desert have it!
i'd take a good hard look at your outside space and see what you can put in that will be low-maintenance, and what you can let go altogether.
khairete
S.

We hired someone for a while to cut the lawn every other week (for $20) and do the edging. The gardens (flower and otherwise) were still on us. We get someone to blow leaves to the curb about every other year, if we have the money but not the time. This past summer DH and I traded off mowing (not a big yard) and didn't bother edging most of the time. He's the one who tends the vegetable garden and I've given up on flowers. We also have several azaleas for spring color. They need very little tending.

Hi,

I've known people to completely get rid of flower beds and just use containers (like urns and hanging baskets) to add color. Or easy care shrubs that require little pruning.

As for lawn, if you don't like to mow, plenty of teenagers do this kind of thing for extra money. My nephew did for years - had a little company. He mowed, pruned, weeded, moved dirt for people - whatever they needed. My mother has a girl in her 20's who does this during the summer. There must be some in your area. They often advertise on bulletin boards, etc.

Neighbors down the street get their lawn and garden taken care for a month during the summer when they go away. It's just a professional service that comes and does it.

For our beds, we put down that material/fabric that stops weeds from coming through and I also use mulch. We rarely have to weed the gardens. You can use newspaper under the mulch too I've heard.

Friends of ours took out much of their yard and put in a patio with a fire pit. They were tired of maintaining the lawn. The kids can still use it with their trikes and for basketball.

Good luck :)

It IS time consuming. I used to love my gardens but as I've gotten older and the getitng up and down off the ground has become more bothersome I've been eliminating gardens. I got rid of two last year - took some of the plant and made a narrow garden agains the fence where the grass never grows anyway. The big thing that reduces weeds is putting down newspaper (I wet it) and then mulch on top of it. It does take some time to do that but it will last a few years (you have to re-do the mulch each year but it's easier to spreadh mulch than to pull weeds.) I do plan on elimnating another gardern this year. We got rid of a tree so there's sun and I hope we can grow grass there this year.

We hope toi sell the house in 5 years so by then hopefully we'll only have two or three gardens...

I put down mulch and put preene on my beds. I rarely have to pull weeds, and I have a lot of gardens. Yes, it's chemicals, but they make a product you can use on veggie gardens that isn't toxic. I use that. It works great.

I get myself on a schedule in the summer. Monday is prune roses, weed...and then I mow a different day. It isn't all that much time. Maybe 2 hours a week. I couldn't imagine spending 150 a month for someone else to do it for me. I'd rather buy good wine. Besides, yard work is free exercise! It does the body good. :-)

Maybe you can find a middle school age kid to hire. I used to weed for an old lady down the street from us and for one of my former teachers. My parents didn't pay me to do it!

I'm with you! I friggin' hate it! Hubs and I both work full time and are raising a grandchild and time is at a premium. We have started digging out the lawn in the front - we're going with cement all around! We can get color from flowers in containers which are much easier to manage.

If you really hate doing it then get rid of the garden beds - end of problem.
Just plant it over with grass and mow it with the rest of the lawn.

Honesly, I weed once I see them.
We don't use chemicals.
Sometimes I have to re-do the bark (laying down weed mesh protecter then bark.

mow as needed.

Basic tools gloves, shovel, hoe, small shovel, gardening shears.

Don't think anyone will just "weed" unless you pay a teen in your neighborhood.

I, also, have areas w/river rock..

Pick less pollen times to work in yard. You could wear a mask.

You could hire someone to mow your lawn once a week or once every two weeks but I would just do it myself to save money.

Where we live it is very common to hire out a gardening service. How big is your yard? Yards run small were I live and a once a week lawn, trim, and weed service (usually includes fertilizing and sprinkler maintenance as well) can run $50- $150 a month depending on the size of your yard.
We have what is considered a large yard for our area at 13,000 s.f. and paid $100 month for a not so great service. We just redid our yard and hired one to the construction crew to maintain it at $150 a month.

At the beginning of the season, I paid some people to pull the weeds, from then on, I tried to keep up with it by using a hoe, or pulling them. We lived close to a creek and the weeds would grow like crazy.

Right now we are in a new home with a totally brand new yard. Whenever we see a weed, we are pulling them. Of course not sure how long that will last. Our neighbors on one side of us has not pulled any weeds and it is going to be interesting to see how that works out,

We do our own here in FL, but we have hired someone in PA to mow and take care of the flower gardens. It costs us about $200 a month for both plus the edging. We have the house for sale so its important that this gets done.

I would recommend putting in low maintenance plants or shrubs. They do make eco friendly weed killers (that's what I use), they just need to be applied more often (at least here in FL). You an also make your own with vinegar, dish soap and water.

We put in recycled rubber mulch last year and it cut down the amount of weeds we get, it also doesn't fade and still looks great, but it is flammable.

I hire a neighborhood teen to help with weeding. I'm happy for the help and he's happy to earn some extra cash.

We just mow. Don't care if there are weeds or not because we mow so they don't matter.

We have rocks and cacti. Pretty easy. But we still hire a landscaper to trim the 5 bushes we have and the 5 trees and to blow the leaves away and spray the weeds. They come every 2 weeks and we pay them $80 per month. Yes, you can ask them to do whatever you need and they will quote you appropriately. You can also get a quote for a one time clean up then stay on top of it yourself. Good luck.