In my children’s picture book, “The Can-Do Karate Kid,” Laziness is a blue slug monster and Procrastination is a blue and green snail monster. Here is what gardening with Laziness and Procrastination is like, since spring is here and plants are growing. Last week, we saw Makoto’s plant list with a lot of things to deter these antagonists. Now it’s their turn to dream garden dreams.

Why Gardening with Laziness and Procrastination is a Package Deal

Laziness would like to have a nice garden full of lush plants. But he’s just too lazy to plant anything. If it were left up to him, the yard would be full of overgrown weeds. And although you can eat some weeds, very few of them are tasty to a slug monster. He’s happy to have his friend Procrastination help with the garden. Even though this snail guy will keep putting off his planting, if Laziness bugs him enough, eventually Procrastination will get out there and garden. So “working” together, they will get some things growing. Maybe not now, but they will do it later.

List for Gardening with Laziness and Procrastination

Both slugs and snails like the same types of plants. That’s why gardening with Laziness and Procrastination is gardening with two guys with the same taste. They particularly like plants with fat, tasty, wholesome leaves and stems. These guys also like most vegetable plants when those plants are young and tender. They will eat them down to the ground so you would never have known they sprouted if you didn’t keep a close watch. On Laziness and Procrastination’s “to plant” list, so they can eat them all:

Beans                                   

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Cucumbers

Hosta (see “toxicity” in this Wikipedia post)

Lettuce

Marigold

Mustard

Pepper

Pumpkin

Strawberries (the fruit)

Zucchini

If you want to get or keep snails and slugs out of your garden, there are a lot of tips online for doing so. However, if you like the idea of gardening with laziness and procrastination (meaning you want to be a lazy, hands-off gardener), you have options! Here are some systems that do a lot of the work for you: Back to Eden, Hugelkultur, Lasagna Gardening, Permaculture, and The Ruth Stout Gardening Method. There’s even a book called “The Autopilot Garden: A Guide to Hands-off Gardening.”

-Jenifer Tull-Gauger