RE: How to eliminate all work from growing your own food 🌱 Just plant & harvest! 🌾
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Yes!
Growing up in wild nature, mulch is so obviously something central to enriching of biodiversity and abundance... I still cringe when I see bare soil exposed to the elements, which Nature rarely allows (unless there is an imbalance where man has interfered nearby) - and I activated my inbuilt wisdom about this when I studied permaculture and other things like the Grow More Vegetables book.
It has been challenging, even when heavily mulching, here in this part of Italy, as the intense heat (and perhaps excessive insect and vermin activity), seem to make the layers of compost dissipate into thin air, but I know that slowly-slowly the soil is becoming more living and useful - and I continue to build on that: just trying to get the balance between allowing the greenery to proliferate, and chopping it back to create thick layers of ground coverage... It is kind of a wrestling dance 😍
My garden neighbour (a little old lady from Germany) has always tried to drum that message in for Sabrina & I. Never leave the soil exposed! And I have noticed an in-built resistance to this. I don't know how they've done it but perhaps through cartoons or some other influence in my early years I have developed this automatic feeling that the 'neatest' way for a bed to look is with lots of lovely brown soil and zero weeds! It has been difficult to break this bad habit but now that I fully understand the WHY I think it should stick this time ;)
I can imagine the excessive heat must make it extra testing for you in Italy and I suppose the answer is as it always is... just add more mulch. Stout recommends at least 8 inches as a bare minimum and indicates the biggest challenge with this type of gardening is getting our hands on a sufficient quantity of mulch.
A little trip to the forrest should do the trick for us...
All the best with your wrestling dance!