Get some chickens!
You get eggs (and meat if you're that way inclined)
and you get lots of lovely poo.
They eat your scraps
They help dig the garden and dispose of all your nasties - they love slugs.
And they're fun!

Use newspaper or old phone directory pages as mulch. Make sure the earth is damp, spread the paper, several sheets thick and make this wet then cover with compost, grass cuttings or any other mulching material. Locks the moisture in and cuts down greatly on watering and smothers the weeds.

Grow in raised beds, much easier to look after than daunting rows of veg. Also great for anyone with a bad back as it's much easier to sit on the path and plant, water etc. You don't need to dig the ground either, just put down a thick layer of cardboard inside the raised bed framework and put down your soil/compost on top of that. You will get some weedgrowth through ie dandelions but every time you crop, give the ground a good fork over to extract the weeds and it won't take long before they're gone.

A tip I picked up from here, keep old sponges and cut up and use in pots and hanging baskets to act as a water reservoir, again cuts down on watering.

I'm a great fan of non dig gardening, this frees up tons of time, just use cardboard and mulch. For previously undug ground it can take a year and several applications of cardboard and mulch but it kills nearly everything (not bindweed, but it weakens it) and the ground becomes easy enough to work with a handfork. Let the worms do the work for you.

Cardboard is the true gardener's friend!
Sue