Top Tips To Stop Your Garden From Going Wild While You Travel

Contributed post.

There’s no better feeling than hitting the sky on the brink of a new and exciting overseas adventure. When you set off, you’re probably ready to leave everything about your real life behind, including boring home tasks like gardening! Unfortunately, there’s also no worse feeling than heading home to find your yard entirely overgrown or wilted.

Does this mean you need to stress about your outside space for the duration of your trip? Absolutely not! But it does mean you might want to spare a thought or two for garden maintenance before you go.
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Some surprisingly simple preparations can help to keep your garden neat and flourishing during even a long trip away. Let’s get into them here!

1. Extensive Weeding

The lead-up to a trip away can be an intense time. There’s packing to consider and paperwork to compile. In other words, your garden is probably the last thing on your mind. But what do you think happens if there are already established weeds growing in your beds when you go? That’s right – they’ll inevitably take over. 

Weeding extensively before a trip is therefore non-negotiable. This will help safeguard the future of your garden while you travel, making extensive weed growth unlikely in the interim, especially if you mulch as you go.

2. Automated Watering

In an ideal world, you would have a gardening buddy to water your plants, but that isn’t always possible. Hence, automated watering solutions are any traveler’s best friend, and they can ensure that plants stay fed and healthy throughout even long trips away.

There are various solutions to consider for this purpose, including basic drip irrigation kits, which will ensure precise, targeted watering over time. Equally, you could opt for a more high-tech solution, such as soil moisture sensors and water timers that connect directly to your taps. There are also solar-powered solutions on the market, and these will work with the sun to ensure that your plants get water right when they need it, even as you’re jet-setting around the world.

3. Reliable Drainage

We’re sorry to break it to you, but returning to a wild garden isn’t the worst thing that can happen if you don’t think about plants before catching a plane. Sitting water, which can happen if your plants are left to their own devices, is also a notable issue. Not only can this lead to wilted, waterlogged plants but, if it happens around your property's foundations, it could lead to issues like soil contraction. And that can cause everything from cracked walls to structural instability. Those things are every bit as bad as they sound, and they’ll see you having to contact local foundation repair companies before you even unpacked.

Luckily, you can avoid this by implementing a decent drainage system before you go. Solutions like French drains and soakaways ensure that even automated water runs off as needed, keeping your garden looking lovely and your home on solid foundations for your return.