Since Mike has retired he has taken over the vegetable garden that I had always done before. We are constantly bickering over organic versus chemicals and his very literal mind. If I say manure is good for the garden, he finds it, loads it and then puts a foot of fresh manure on the garden and tills it in. If bark and wood chips are good another foot of that, leaves....he tills in 6 inches adds another 6 inches and tills it in! If I can convince him to add nothing more for the next 3 year I'll probably have great garden soil. With the wood and bark chips I meant that they would be good (thin layer) in the path ways to walk on. I guess he missed part of what I said. I think he finally got what I meant when last year vegetable crop was a flop and I've been buying a lot of the vegetables that I normally pick and can. Cross your fingers for me that this year I'll have a decent crop of vegetables. I asked him to bring a wheel barrel of wood chips in so I could mulch my flowers, then I went in to put a roast in the crockpot. By the time I got back out he had spread 4 inches of bark everywhere. A lot of the short plants were buried. I uncovered the buried ones and tried to smooth it out , removing some bark but the next spring I had to lift and replant some of the flowers as they were in actual holes with mulch around them. Finally I think he understands that nature works slowly and hopefully our yard will flourish and we won't be bickering! Lesson to be learned..some times less is better!
My husband is also retired, and is a great help in the garden under supervision. He tills, he spreads mulch (but only on the paths), and he helps pick certain vegetables (the ones that are obvious and don't require a decision about ripeness.) Spend some time training your husband in gardenly ways, and then supervise, supervise, supervise! It will get better. It can't get much worse. Could you convince Mike to take up golf?
I have mine trained to ask before he does anything other than mow the lawn or rake leaves. Under supervision he's beginning to show promise. Who knows one day I may even let him out there on his own. :-D
With the crop failures we've had, he is now asking how much to add and he has been a great help in so many ways that I haven't had to heart to really get mad. It's just he is a little OCD and has only been retired fulltime for the last 3 years. He has taken over most of the weeding in the vegetable garden and as we plant in rows there's not a lot of room for mistakes. Hopefully this year we will have enough produce to last through the year. I hate buying the tasteless canned food from grocery stores plus I don't like knowing that chemicals and pesticides are used on them. I'm not totally organic but I do try to limit what I can.
Nice to know that he is now more knowledgeable about planting. Let him have a small plot of his own and guide him through the dos and don'ts of organic cultivation. Once he get the hang of it I am sure the both of you'll make a great team and have great harvest yearly.
Mine isn't retired yet and thankfully has no interest in helping the in garden but he is learning to identify some of the plants. He does heavy moving, lifting and building of things though. I was telling him about this conversation yesterday and his comment was "you really have to be specific, otherwise if some is good then it stands to reason that more has got to be better".
toni, your hubby sounds like mine! I guess it is a 'man thing'! I feel that I should be fair in that he does all the mowing, edging, most of the watering, a lot of the weeding (veggy garden only, he doesn't touch my flowerbeds) and will to haul any heavy loads for me and build or weld whatever idea I've dreamed up. He is a keeper. :-D And he has learned a lot through trial and error.
