Always had a garden and would be lost without one.
Just a matter of routine.
Probably spend about 1/2 hour a day on them averaged out.
Glyco & fine mulch is the answer.
Anything that comes through the mulch is a weed so gets a rub with the glyco wand.
I have tried weed mats under the mulch with the plants poking through tight cut holes.
Just about everything gets planted as a seedling so some times the root veggies don't quite work if the leading tip of the root gets munched up .
And yes raised beds is the way to go .
Got a dozen IBC's from a recycler customer a while back so will be making some water bed gardens shortly as they take even less care & can be left for a week in summer .
The only real problem down here is the Queensland fruit fly .
A research group ( funded by big supermarket chains & big agri businesses ) did some work that found the sprays used to control fruit fly were very dangerous to bees so they recommended banning them for residential use & limiting them to lisenced farmers.
The fact that fruit flies attack ripening fruit which happens a long while after the flowers that the bees would be pollinating have dropped off was apparently beyond the interlectual capacity of the politicans . So it appears we have learned nothing from the days of the cane toad , intorduced to control the cane beetle but the life cycle of them is such that neither come into contact with each other .
Thus nearly all commercial fruit & vegies are picked green ( makes them easy to transport ) then ripened chemically , so they all look the same and of course have almost a single day of shelf life so you have to shop 3 times a week if you want to eat fresh. .
Thus I have to plant about 10 times the number of caps . tomatoes, squash, zuccini stone fruit , apples , pears , citrus etc than I need in order to get a feed and now the fruit flies are starting to attack the oilves