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A lot of people love to push garden tools around.

There’s something deeply satisfying about it: the rake lines, the fresh-turned soil, the feeling that you “did something.” And sure—there’s honest value in sweat equity.

But if you’re doing time-constrained gardening, the tool-pushing isn’t the main event.

Thinking is.

Because the fastest way to waste an hour a day is to garden like a slot machine: keep pulling the handle and hope tomatoes fall out.

Push a Pencil for Gardening Success!

What you want instead is the engineer’s approach:

• Define the output
• Choose the system
• Calculate the inputs
• Allocate space

Then do the work once, correctly

That’s what “Math Is Your Friend” really means. Math isn’t cold. It’s kindness. It keeps you from planting yourself into a corner.

Start With the Only Question That Matters: How Much Food?

Before we talk varieties, beds, hydro, fertilizer, any of it—answer this:

What do you want the garden to produce in a week?

Not in vibes. In food.

Are You Hungry Yet?

Let’s keep it simple with a core menu that works for real life:

• Romaine (salads)
• Beefsteak tomatoes (salads, sandwiches)
• Green peppers (kitchen utility)
• Yellow squash (fast volume, dependable)

Now decide a target. Here are three “household intent” targets you can pick from for your Hour-a-Day garden:

• Light supplement: 3 salads/week + some cooking vegetables (May take 30-minutes a day)
• Strong supplement: 5–7 salads/week + steady cooking vegetables (45-minutes)
• Heavy producer: daily salads + surplus for neighbors/preserving – This is the Hour A Day profile.

You don’t need perfect numbers. You need a direction.

So let’s do engineer math: choose a target, then work backwards.

Output Math: Convert “Meals” Into “Plants”

Below are reasonable planning assumptions. They aren’t sacred. But they’re close enough to keep you from guessing.

Romaine

A full-size romaine head is roughly 8–12 oz trimmed depending on growing conditions. If your salads use about 6 oz of greens per person, a two-person salad is ~12 oz.

1 romaine head = 1 good two-person salad (roughly)

If you want 5 salads/week, you want 5 heads/week.

Romaine maturity is often 55–75 days, but with staggered planting you can harvest weekly.

A safe planning number for continuous harvest:

Plant 6–10 romaine per week of desired harvest, depending on heat, pests, and whether you do full-head harvest or “cut-and-come-again.”

For our simplified plan:

Want 5 heads/week? Plan on 40–60 romaine plants in rotation.

Beefsteak tomatoes

A healthy beefsteak plant in good conditions can do 10–20+ lbs/season depending on variety, heat management, and disease pressure.

For practical weekly planning in season:

Call it 2–5 lbs/week per plant during its best stretch.

If you want tomatoes for: sandwiches + salads most days → say 10 lbs/week. Then you’re looking at: 3–5 beefsteak plants in peak production

If you want enough to share or can:

6–10 plants  (You should have enough to make frozen tomato sauce!)

Green Peppers

A productive pepper might yield 6–12 peppers/plant over a season. Weekly output varies, but in steady production:

1–2 peppers per plant per week isn’t crazy during peak.  If you want:

7 peppers/week (one a day)?  Then plan:

5–8 pepper plants to avoid feast/famine.  We will be doing 10, or so.

Yellow Squash

Squash is the great humbler: it goes from “nothing” to “why is the kitchen full of squash?” fast.

A good yellow squash plant can easily do:

2–6 squash/week in peak

If you want: 10 squash/week?  You often only need:

2–4 plants (and you’ll still be giving them away).

Squash comes with some fine print.  They are “space hogs.”  We have seen times when 3 squash will cover 20 percent of the garden.  We have taken a vow to get them off the ground – but then you need to worry about shading, but we’ll come to that when our “Hour-a-Day” allows.

So now we have the first half of the engineer approach: plants needed.

Garden Space Planning

Next is the part most gardens fail at:  How much space do those plants actually consume in your chosen system?

Space Math: Plants Are Not “Points,” They’re “Footprints”

Garden plans fail because people treat plants like dots on paper. But plants are volumes with light needs, airflow needs, root needs, and harvest access needs.

Here are conservative footprints for planning:

• Romaine: 1 sq ft each (12″ x 12″)
• Beefsteak tomato: 4–9 sq ft each (depends on pruning/caging; tighter in greenhouse)
• Green pepper: 1–2 sq ft each
• Yellow squash: 16–25 sq ft each (it sprawls – even if you trellis and go vertical)

Now we can do basic layout math. Let’s run a realistic “strong supplement” example:

• Romaine: 50 plants × 1 sq ft = 50 sq ft
• Tomatoes: 6 plants × 6 sq ft = 36 sq ft
• Peppers: 8 plants × 1.5 sq ft = 12 sq ft
• Squash: 3 plants × 20 sq ft = 60 sq ft

Total: 158 sq ft of productive footprint.

(The Garden Engineer pipes up, “Square root of 158 square feet is 12.56 – call it 13-feet on a side. But you will need walkways and overplanting to account for loss due to washouts and bugs…)

That’s not huge. That’s a medium bedroom.

But it’s only true if you allocate it correctly and pick the right growing systems.

So now let’s run the same plan through four systems:

Garden TYPE Impacts Garden SIZE

In our way of thinking, only four garden types are of interest.  (We will get to the sprouting chambers and mushrooms later…)  For now, just consider your base eating crop and where you will harvest them:

• Dirt garden
• Deep Water Culture (DWC)
• NFT (nutrient film technique)
• Raised beds in the greenhouse

Each has different “math multipliers.”

System 1: Dirt Garden Math

Dirt is forgiving. Dirt is also deceptive, because weeds and watering eat time.  Damn bugs and birds.

Dirt spacing (practical)

• Romaine: 12″ centers, in blocks for efficiency
• Tomatoes: 3–4 ft centers if you want less disease pressure
• Peppers: 18″ centers
• Squash: 4–5 ft centers (or trellis, but let’s keep it simple)

Dirt example layout

If you want that 158 sq ft footprint, you’ll usually allocate more like 200–300 sq ft in dirt because:

• you need walking lanes
• you need access
• you lose some space to odd shapes and edges

Engineer rule: in dirt, multiply plant footprint by 1.5–2.0 for real-world space.  Two bedrooms worth of space.  Still a 13 X 25 patch isn’t impossible.

So:

158 sq ft × 1.7 ≈ 270 sq ft (very believable)

That’s a dirt plot about 15′ x 18′. Totally manageable.  More is better, less total failure potential.

System 2: DWC Math (Deep Water Culture)

DWC changes the math because you’re no longer spacing for soil competition. You’re spacing for canopy and access.

DWC strengths

• Fast growth
• Precise nutrition
• Less weeding
• Great for greens and peppers

DWC constraints

• Tomatoes get big fast and demand support
• Squash is awkward unless you’ve designed for it
• You’re limited by container count, lid hole spacing, and light

DWC plant density guidelines

• Romaine: 1 plant per 6″ net cup site if you harvest young; 8–10″ if full head
• Peppers: 1 plant per 8–12″ site
• Tomatoes: usually 1 per bucket (or large site with aggressive support)
• Squash: generally not worth it in small DWC unless you’re committed

Engineer translation:
DWC is fantastic for romaine + peppers, possible for tomatoes, and usually a “no” for yellow squash unless you build a system around it.

DWC example plan (time-constrained)

• Use DWC to carry the romaine rotation and maybe peppers.
• Keep squash in dirt/raised bed.
• Tomatoes: either dirt or greenhouse bed, unless you have a dedicated DWC tomato bucket setup.

During the last Amazon Prime day, Vevor had a real deal on an 8 (five-gallon) bucket DWC kit with air pump and more for under $150.  So…

If you already have such an 8-bucket DWC kit, a clean core allocation might look like:

• 4 containers: tomatoes (one per bucket)
• 4 containers: peppers (one per bucket) or 2 peppers per bucket if you’ve done it before

And romaine? In DWC it’s better as a separate shallow tote raft or a dedicated greens rig, because romaine wants quantity sites, not giant buckets.

System 3: NFT Math (Nutrient Film Technique)

NFT is the accountant’s system: it’s all about site count, flow, and uptime.

NFT strengths

Very high yield per square foot for greens

• Easy staggered planting
• Clean harvest routine
• Perfect for “Hour-a-Day” rhythm

NFT constraints

• Sensitive to power interruptions
• Roots can clog channels
• Big fruiting plants (tomato/squash) are harder unless system is robust

Engineer translation: NFT is the weapon of choice for romaine.

NFT romaine math example

If you want 5 heads/week, and you’re running 60 plants in rotation:

You need 60 sites.

If you use 2″ net cups on 8″ spacing:

Every 8 feet of channel gives ~12 sites (roughly)

So:

60 sites / 12 sites per 8 ft ≈ 5 channels of 8 ft.  That’s a compact wall of food.

This is where math becomes freedom: you can design the whole lettuce supply in a footprint that barely inconveniences the greenhouse.  In a future column we’ll keep you safe from the “sun problem” and the heat problem.  But NFT is a food megasystem for greens.

System 4: Raised Beds in the Greenhouse

Raised beds are dirt with discipline. You control weeds better, amend easier, and you can trellis and shade more predictably.

Greenhouse raised-bed multipliers

• You can tighten tomato spacing if you prune and trellis
• You can protect romaine from heat with shade cloth
• You can run peppers tighter and keep them productive longer

Engineer rule: greenhouse beds can reduce the footprint multiplier back toward 1.2–1.5 because the layout is more controlled.

So that earlier 158 sq ft footprint might become:  158 × 1.3 ≈ 205 sq ft of actual bed area (plus aisles)

And in practice, greenhouse beds help you keep production steady when weather goes sideways.

Engineer’s Summary: A Simple Mixed-System Plan

If we want the core foods (romaine, beefsteak, peppers, yellow squash) and we’re time-constrained, the easiest “no-drama” model is:

• NFT (or a simple greens hydro rig): romaine production engine
• DWC or greenhouse bed: peppers and/or tomatoes
• Dirt or raised bed: yellow squash (because it’s a sprawl beast)

That division is math-driven. Not ideology-driven.

It keeps each crop in the system that suits it, and it keeps you from trying to force squash into a hydro setup where it eats time.

The Real Point of Math

Math isn’t just spacing and yields. Math is how you tell the truth about your time.

Since we’re only doing an hour a day, then every unnecessary task is theft. The weeds don’t care about your intentions. The plants don’t care about your optimism. Nature runs on math.

So should you.

In the next installment, we’ll take the same four crops and do even more useful things:

• build a one-page “garden production budget”
• map it to your actual available space in dirt, DWC buckets, NFT channels, and greenhouse beds
• and show what you can realistically produce without turning “Hour-a-Day Gardening” into “Two Hours of Catch-Up.”

Write when you’ve got the hour—and let the math do the heavy lifting.

We’re still growing,

George and Elaine

Time is Our Most Important Asset

Time is our most important asset, followed closely by our health.
And health—more than most people want to admit—comes from what we eat and drink.

Yet those two priorities get shoved down daily task lists to the point of absurdity. We’ll spend hours scrolling, commuting, and “running errands”… and then act shocked when food gets expensive and energy gets scarce.

This site exists to flip that.

Core Concept 1: One Hour to Feed Yourself

Before we started this site, Elaine looked at me and said:
“I don’t think we need any more responsibility… getting back into our own high-output garden will take time.”

She wasn’t wrong. But here’s the thing most people miss:

Most people are already spending an hour a day feeding themselves.
They just don’t recognize the accounting.

If you work a job, you trade time for money. Then you trade money for food. But the “food pipeline” comes with hidden friction:

• commuting time and cost
• taxes and fees
• price inflation
• convenience premiums
• waste (food that goes bad)
• and often, interest (credit cards, delivery markups, etc.)

So yes—gardening “takes time.”
But so does buying food. You’re just paying for it in a way that’s harder to see.

Hour-A-Day Gardening is grounded in what we call Reality Finance: counting the whole cost, not just the grocery receipt.

Core Concept 2: One Hour a Day Is Huge

Let’s do the math.

There are 365 days in a year. One hour a day equals 365 hours.

Now compare that to a “regular job.” A full-time schedule is roughly 40 hours a week.
365 hours is more than nine full work weeks of effort.

And here’s the kicker:

Your garden has zero commute.
It’s outside your back door—or at worst, a short walk away.

So when we say “one hour a day,” we’re not talking about a cute hobby number. We’re talking about designing a system that can absorb two+ months of focused annual labor—and convert that into food you can see, touch, and eat.

One person can do a lot with that. Two people? Even more.
But the point of this site isn’t to recruit you into farm life.

It’s to prove that an hour—focused and systemized—changes the whole equation.

Core Concept 3: You Run Your Life

How many times have you said, “If I were the boss…”?

Well—this is one place you get to be.

You decide:

• what you like to eat
• what you can grow in your climate
• which methods fit your body and temperament
• how much automation you want
• what your “personal farm budget” is
• what comfort level you want on labor (clean hands? raised beds? no bending? we can do that)

We’re going to use a mix of time management, ag science, and plain-old American inventiveness to hit the One Hour A Day metric.

And when it’s done right, something subtle happens:

You stop asking permission—from bosses, from prices, from supply chains, from the weather panic on the news.

You step closer to the steering wheel of your own life.

Core Concept 4: Right-Sizing Food

We believe in continuous harvesting.

A lot of gardens look great… right up until they bury you.

What do you do with 300 pounds of tomatoes in a short window?
What do you do with 60 heads of romaine all at once?

Hour-A-Day Gardening isn’t about bragging rights. It’s about a measured pace and a steady stream.

We design for:

• fresh eating first (daily greens, herbs, steady vegetables)
• seasonal surges (tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans)
• and controlled overflow that can go to family, neighbors, or the local farmer’s market

And yes—your local farmer’s market is also an intelligence network.
If you want to garden better, find the people who already do.

Core Concept 5: Scalable When It Matters

People ask: How much food can one person really grow in an hour a day?

Answer: more than most people believe—if you use high-yield cropping and remove the time-killers.

Here’s the operating doctrine:

• Grow the highest output crops per square foot (greens + high-yield fruiting crops)
• Plant in succession, so something is always coming on
• Keep soil covered and alive: mulch + compost top-dressing (not constant digging)
• Use automatic drip watering so you’re not chained to a hose
• Build for a daily loop: walk-through → harvest → quick resets → done

When those pieces are in place, your hour isn’t spent “fighting the garden.”
It’s spent harvesting and steering.

And in an emergency—price spikes, supply disruption, sickness, job loss—this scales.
Not into a fantasy homestead.

Into reliable calories and real nutrition when you need it most.

How We’ll Post

In the coming weeks, we’ll try to post regular updates on Thursdays. That gives you Friday to pick up parts or supplies as part of your normal weekly workflow—and gives you the weekend to work the weather intelligently.

If you want to do more than an hour a day, by all means—go for it.

But we’ve got other dreams and projects. Out here, circling 80, we still intend to have adventures.

We’re in this for the food… and for the freedom that comes with it.

We’re still growing,

George and Elaine

Elaine and I are circling 80. I’m under, she’s over. We’re looking out over about 30 acres. The deer wander through, we winter-feed a few feral cats.  We have a house (and shop) full of “workstations.”  And life is very, very good.  Still, there is always room for improvement.

We’ve grown food before, kept chickens, done the whole “let’s see how self-sufficient we can get” routine, and yes, it was fun.

But here’s the truth nobody puts on the glossy gardening sites: the math changes as you get older.

Not worse math. Different math.

Time math. Body math.

When you’re younger, you can brute-force a garden. You can make up for poor systems with sweat. You can muscle through a weedy month, haul water farther than you should, and treat “spring planting” like a season-long endurance event.

When you’re older, you can still grow food. But the trade-off is no longer “How much can we do?” It becomes “How much can we do and still have a life?”

That’s where Hour a Day Gardening comes from.

We’re not trying to be homesteading heroes. We’re lifestyle engineers. The goal is a better life, not a bigger workload.

What we have today is a practical, working setup:

• An indoor hydroponic hatchery for starts and fast greens

• A lean-to greenhouse for shoulder seasons, protection, and steady production

• A dirt garden up behind the solar panels for the heavy lifters and the classics – this one is fallow and due for a rework.  But that will start with a rethink – and that’s what this sit is about.

This site is about making that whole system run on a sane time budget: about an hour a day, most days, with a plan for the days we don’t.

The Core Idea

Gardening succeeds or fails on two things:

1. Timing (and time-on-task)

2. Systems

Most failures aren’t “bad luck.” They’re mismatched effort. The work shows up all at once, you fall behind, and then the garden becomes a stress machine.

We’re building the opposite: a steady, repeatable loop that produces food without producing misery.

Our Goals for the Year

These are the goals we’re working toward. They’re not romantic. They’re real.

Goal 1: Reliable fresh food, not a perfect garden
We want consistent harvests of the things we actually eat. Not novelty crops. Not a photo shoot. Food.

Goal 2: Lower labor, higher output
If a task requires constant bending, hauling, fiddling, or “daily babysitting,” it either gets redesigned or replaced.

Goal 3: Fewer failure points
Simple beats clever. Systems that survive heat, storms, and missed days win.

Goal 4: A garden that supports the rest of life
The garden should not steal time from sleep, relationships, health, and the rest of the ranch.

Benchmarks We’ll Measure

This is the part most gardening sites avoid: measurable targets. We’re not doing this to “feel busy.” We’re doing it to improve outcomes.

Benchmark 1: One-hour operating envelope
Most days: one hour total garden work.
Busy days: 15 minutes “minimum viable garden.”
Once a week: one longer session for heavier maintenance.

Benchmark 2: Starts pipeline
The indoor hatchery should keep a steady flow of starts so the greenhouse and dirt garden never sit idle waiting on seedlings.

Success looks like:

• always having the next round ready

• fewer panic trips to buy plants

• fewer “missed windows” in the season

Benchmark 3: Water sanity
Water is the silent killer in gardening. It eats time and it breaks spirits.

Success looks like:

• fewer hose-dragging marathons

• watering systems that don’t demand daily rescue

• the ability to miss a day without losing everything

Benchmark 4: Heat strategy that works
We live where summer is not a suggestion.

Success looks like:

• shade planning

• heat-tolerant varieties

• timing that avoids planting into failure

• greenhouse practices that don’t turn into a plant sauna

Benchmark 5: Harvest rhythm
We want the kitchen to be fed at a steady pace, not overwhelmed twice a year.

Success looks like:

• regular salads and greens

• predictable tomatoes/peppers/squash cycles

• preservation only when it’s worth it (and when it’s fun)

What You’ll Find Here

This is not a “watch me garden” site. It’s a “let’s build a system that works” site.

We’ll share:

• What we plant and why (especially under heat and time constraints)

• What we stop planting and why (this is just as important)

• Layout decisions that reduce steps and bending

• How we stage work so nothing becomes an emergency

• The weekly loop: what gets done, when, and how long it really takes

• The “minimum viable garden” plan for when life happens

And we’ll be honest about the real constraint nobody likes to say out loud:

Energy matters.

The trick is not to pretend we’re 40. The trick is to design a garden that lets us enjoy being  80-ish —while still pulling food out of the ground like we know what we’re doing.

Because we do.

And this time, we’re building it to last.

We’re not tryinbg to “get lazy” – no, not at all.  What we are interested in is exploring new and better optimizations for what has already been a kick-ass life.

We’re still growing,

George and Elaine