Even 50 square meters of garden is a lot of work
What size garden or flower bed can you afford so as not to turn a pleasant and useful hobby into hard labor?
Many find it hard to believe, but for the average amateur gardener, the optimal size of the cultivated area is somewhere between 30 and 100 square meters.
Let’s estimate it:
In my personal experience, and this figure coincides with most of the estimates I know, to maintain a healthy and visually appealing 1m2 of fully cultivated land: a flower bed, vegetable garden, or ornamental garden, an experienced gardener spends at least 1 hour per year. And this is an optimistic estimate, already taking into account all possible mechanization.
You will have to:
- weed out the weeds
- prune bushes and trees
- protect the garden from pests
- repair and adjust equipment
- apply fertilizers
- and most importantly, constantly monitor your plants and analyze the information obtained
The last point, in my opinion, is more important than all the previous ones combined, because observation and analysis turn gardening into a creative process.
If you don’t have much gardening experience, feel free to multiply the average time spent by 2, or even 4.
Therefore, to maintain a 50m2 ornamental garden, the average amateur gardener will spend from 100 to 200 working hours per year. Or 2-4 hours per week.
For a garden of 100m2, you will need from 4 to 8 hours per week. Taking into account the necessary breaks for rest during gardening work, we get a full working day. Further on, it’s a direct proportionality.
What to do if you have a garden larger than 100m2?
Fortunately, there is a simple and time-tested answer to this question: allocate the “extra” meters for a lawn and regularly mow it. Then, with proper mechanization, the labor costs will be reduced to 15-20 minutes per m2 per year.
Yours sincerely, A. Ershov, CEO of Symbiose Intelligente
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