THE LAZY LADY'S LOW-LABOR GARDEN

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Put your seeds in the ground as late in the season as possible. The longer you delay your planting (within reason, of course), the more chances you'll have to till under all the weed sprouts . . . instead of painstakingly hoeing around each young vegetable plant. I can till my entire half-acre garden in about two hours . . . but it would take days to hoe it by hand.

Plan to turn the soil once as soon as it becomes workable in the spring. Then wait for a good flush of weeds to appear (probably after about two weeks), and till the plot again. If you can wait a few more weeks before planting the seeds, till the soil a third time. The delay will pay off in the long run, and save you hours of hand weeding and hoeing. (The repeated tillings will also destroy most of the belowground cutworms that have wintered over in the soil.)

Of course, a relatively late planting could make it difficult to grow such cool-weather crops as lettuce . . . unless you apply plenty of mulch. A good organic ground covering will keep the soil cool and moist, build fertility (as you turn it under from year to year), and shade out most of the weeds that survive the spring tilling.

Cool-weather crops and root vegetables should be mulched (to within a few inches of the seeds) as soon as they're planted. Hot -weather vegetables — such as squash, corn, tomatoes, and beans — should not be mulched until the soil has warmed up considerably . . . about the middle of June in my part of Idaho. (It's also a good idea to mulch the garden's paths even thicker than you do the rows. Heap the organic matter right on there, to a good foot deep!)

Even after your many preparations — which will insure that your vegetables have all the growing advantages you can give them — are done, you're still going to have to deal with the weeds and bugs that remain. And the newer the garden is to organic culture, the more uninvited plants and insects you should expect.

However, much of the remaining control work can be done by "helpers". To keep the problems in hand, just call on wild birds, toads, and ( if you can get them) chickens. It won't take much doing to attract such assistants to the garden . . . and by harvest time any efforts that you've made to do so will have been paid back many times over. A single toad, for instance, will eat up to ten pounds of insects during one season. ( And snails, slugs, and cutworms are among the amphibians' favorite treats!)

You'll find it's pretty easy to get a few toads to take up residence in your garden: Simply sink a small water-filled tub in the ground and place a few upsidedown flowerpot "caves" — with "tunnel" entrances beneath them — near its rim . . . you'll soon have your own sticky-tongued midnight pest patrol!

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