Seed saving can be great, but it will have an influence on what you can plant depending on what crosses with what. I think we don't bother with pumpkins, as the ones we prefer to eat cross pollinate and means icky pumpkins next season.
We just let a lot of done plants go to seed, they are great at attracting the bees for plants that need them, along with that some of them look awesome in seed. Some lettuces are just fascinating.
We have limited pumpkin growth at this house - not as much room to let them roam! Have also found they're not so successful here. Butternut pumpkin isn't so easy to grow here. Qld blue go great (but we can't always get seedlings).
We save capsicum seeds drying. Peas and beans too. Tomato self seed like crazy so hubby just transplants them to another spot to avoid blossom end rot.
Astrid, I totally agree with you about how fascinating some veggies seem when they go to seed. Even boring old ice berg lettuce looks pretty interesting
How many hours would the garden require. Is it daily?
Also there are some planter boxes (I assume no dig?) already here, put they are perma pine sleepers. Do we need to get rid of them or could we line them somehow? Does it soak through the soil?
If you have a watering system in place it doesn't take a lot of time. Planting, weeding Etc might take a day or two here and there but once it's established it really doesn't take much. For is, we spend a weekend at the start of planting to weed, dig it all over and prepare the soil. We leave it a week or two and then spend a weekend planting seedlings and seeds. As things grow dh may spend half a day here or there staking plants (had a to judge the time cos he plays footy in between)
Over summer, if we don't have rain, He spends about half hour out there each night, watering. But that's because he chooses to water by hand.
Feeding the fruit trees and mulching is maybe half hour each season
Forgot to mention we also have strawberries in an old bath, and in pots. Our "edible" garden pretty much surrounds the border of our yard in one way or another, so half hour isn't really a bad amount of time to spend out there watering.
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Re: Self sufficient
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