So true so true. I think you have opened a can of worms. My hubby rarely does anything in the garden. I broadcast seed areas and sometimes I catch him pulling up my treasured seedlings without a second thought. Quizzed about why he would do such a thing his comment is I thought it was just a weed. My question is "How would you know?" His response I never really thought about it. I should try that approach when it comes to cooking dinner. (or should I say, not cooking dinner)

I hear ya!I can't begin to count how many plants I've lost to his 'bull in a china shop' techniques.
Flowers?What flowers? We don't need no stinkin' flowers!

This is why I do the yardwork now - hubby's only allowed to do the really tough stuff, like chopping down trees & digging = J

carolb,

AMEN!!

BoD

step on plants!??? how bout mow over them, weed whack them etc!!!!!

Agree!!!! Purple flowers all over it....Oh, was THAT one of your plants???

hmmmm.... maybe it's because we're carrying some 300 pound something, for the 11th time, while the wife dithers about whether it looks good HERE or THERE.

i suppose you have to have 2 x chromosomes in order to ignore burned out light bulbs for six months. or not to know how to use an electric screwdriver.

not to indulge in any stereotypes or anything...

You may be right about genetics, Nancy.
Reflecting on the long human history men have always had to be on the lookout for dangers or game. Therefor they were focused on distance. Only attention to near ground was to search for dangers they might step on.
Women, on the other hand, dealt with the crops and the near ground and had to be careful not to kill their food crop by stepping on it.
I may be wrong but that's my guess.

*shakes head*

I'm not even going to start on this one... its that bad around her. Lets just say several recently potted small plants from a trade were crushed (pots and all...) under the back half of a car. As in, it was unattached from the front half and gently placed on top of my little "ghetto" as some call it. I was not happy.

Reminds me of a seed patch of zinnias when I first began my gardening .I was so excited to see them pop there lil heads up. All of a sudden they were dead.Found out hubby had dumped the contents of the salt water aquarium on them to water them!!!!!
He recently mowed over a small tree in the yard and then told me nothing was there.

Ladies. if you have a small tree or plant you don't want mowed over place a tall rebar next to it and tie a banana on it(preferably the kind with a skull on it!)

Goldenpond... you mean tie a bandanna on it? Lol... banana...

About that remote you never stomp on....... maybe cut out a few catalog pictures of YOUR plants, tape securely to the remote, wait a sensitive, appropriate amount of time and proceed to stomp......

I had 7 named Muscadine Grapevines that I have been training/cultivating/harvesting for years. They are in long rectangular containers, with the bottoms knocked out so they can root into the ground. The area I have them in used to be prone to flooding, back when it actually rained in Jupiter.. So the slightly raised root area was meant to prevent them from drowning, and the container edges made weeding easier.. But, there were worse dangers lurking.

My DH, when clearing out along the fenceline, tore the vines off the fence, yamked the containers out of the ground, and dumped my precious vines in a large heap.

When I saw what he'd done, I was horrified! Each vine is clearly labled. They were tied to the supporting fence. He has seen me tending them and picking grapes for years.

He claimed he thought they were dead, because they were DORMANT! He is from NY, where lots of plants go dormant! I was able to save 6 of the vines.

Grr......

He explained to me, that when something does not directly pertain to him, or his interests, he tunes out any info related to it. Different brain, for sure!

Lisa

The solution is very simple, instead of men bashing, you could simply do the task yourself or place some stepping stones in the garden and warn him to only step on the stones. Ever think that the 'destruction' may be by design? so as not to be asked again to do work in 'your' garden? See, my wife would never think of stepping in MY garden, so there is really no problem here. I do ALL the outside work....

Lisa,you have hit the nail on the head!
Male or female,if it is not your interest you do not care for it. Also known as self center,selfishness.
My dainty wife is known for stepping on my garden plants. She is not a gardener so is not her interest. Solution to the problem is step on their feet real hard each time they step on your plants. Better yet,go put on your high heels and step on their feet.I as a man,rarely step on my plants because it is my interest. Let us all learn from this to
do unto others as you would like to be done unto you.
But make sure that you step on their feet hard to get their
attention.
Then let us all have world peace!LOL
Felix

felix, you are my hero.

Ben, I don't ask my hubby to work in the gardens at all. His job is to mow the lawn (he considers using the push mower as exercise) and to cut down dead trees as needed. He is too thrifty to pay someone else to do it.

He is unaware of how many fruiting plants we have, but does enjoy eating the fruits. Today he picked/ate 4 apples off the apple trees, as he mowed. He had fresh Peaches from the garden with breakfast, and home-grown Tomatos with dinner. He is not "bashed" for being a man, but his actions sometimes conflict with my efforts at growing things(G).

I did ask him not to tear out plants with labels, and he agreed.

Lisa

Felix.... control yourself and please DO NOT post a pic of your hairy toes in those high heels that you go stomping around in. (maybe I can borrow em one day and do some quilt stomping)

A friend gave us a few potted royal palms last fall. Dh up potted them last week ( which I am grateful for).
I truly appreciate his ability to pick up heavy objects.

Trouble is that I have a patch of perennial peanut that I am experimenting with. I am considering putting it in the pathways. And he knows this.

Where did he put one of the 15 gallon Royal palms ?
You guessed it. Right on top of the p. peanut.

Just last week he was commenting on how pretty the little yellow flowers were....................................

D`Ann

To the gentlemen on this forum: I specifically put 'most' in the subject line since I have met several of you and know that you would never step on plants. As it has been said it is your interest. Ben you make a good point about never having the husbands do anything in the garden, but even when I get the cable guy out there checking out a problem (we don't even have cable), I point out my plants, he steps on them. Maybe Lakeron has hit on it. My hubby is definitely not detail oriented, except about music, movies, books, his interests. I am, except about those burned out light bulbs, I can still see if I move just right, ha ha.
Nancy

My husband thought he would help me out by weed wacking the weeds in the flower bed! He pruned my reed orchid, mowed over the fire spike bush, and stomped on my angel wing begonia while painting the fence! My Nun's orchid disappeared when he replaced the fence. We are getting ready to put in a water pond and I am digging up my plants that are near the area because I know I will never see them again if I don't move them. Everytime he decides on an outdoor project, I have to run for the milk crates to cover up my prize plants or at least take cuttings! Is it selective vision?

Regina

Tony, you had me in tears with "hairy toes in those high heels that you go stomping around in."
Felix

As a gentleman, I can say that I have still managed to accidentally step on or otherwise mangle several prize plants of my own. Even in broad daylight. Of course all bets are off now that summer is here and I do most of my gardening during twilight/nighttime hours. Now I truly cannot see most of the plants in my garden as I work with them. Try gardening by echolocation... It's neat :)

A microcosm of this is my cockatiels. The male will barrel over things in his path as he's worried about his objective and not the things in between, but the female will take the path of least resistance and avoid disturbing things in her path. Besides that, since I'm the gardner, I always have to tell my wife what to watch out for in the garden, and she's annoyed that I have to.

Gary

Okay, enough of this foolishness. It's not 'men', Nancy, it's simply non-gardeners. Because the majority of gardeners worldwide are female, it follows closely that the majority of non-gardeners therefore are male. A non-gardener placed into your garden can't and won't even try to see the trees, they'll see the forest just fine, though.

If you have a spouse, either seat up or seat down, and that person takes on the grace of a bull in a china shop each time they step into your garden, try these tips:

1. Never let them walk alone in the garden.
2. Put down numbered stepping stones with designations for right and left foot.
3. Trade in the spouse for a new one.
4. Just be thankful you're not a polygamist.

Ricky, Gee I was wondering if you were going to chime in. Thought I offended you for a bit there. I have the greatest husband in the world, I'd never trade him in even if he does step on plants on occasion. It seems to be true, it is non gardeners. I'm glad though that he is a non-gardener for the most part. The garden is mine alone to do as I please, no sharing with plants that he might want, ha ha.
By the way, never letting him in the garden alone doesn't work. I'll be with him and say, "watch that plant." He'll say, "I know, I see it." Five seconds later he steps on it, forgot I guess.
Nancy

I have to agree with the men posting here: it is not about the gender, but rather about non-gardeners.
My father is an agricultural engineer, and he has to stop my mom from digging things out, discarding them as weeds, and so on. She learned a lot now that she retired and spends a lot of time in the garden with him.
I remember someone wrote on orchid forum: Gee, my friends bought an orchid, let it flower and kept it as an arrangement, and then threw it away. How do I clue them in? --You do not. Not everyone is supposed to be a gardener and be able to distinguish a weed from a non-weed, and know how to keep an orchid alive....different personalities, likes and dislikes, and perspectives, it is quite normal :)

Olya

Oh my, this thread had me laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't quit laughing all through the thing. I told DH about the thread when I started reading it, then kept chuckling right out loud, I couldn't quit, it was just too funny. He asked me what I was chuckling about so I read him a few more.

I do all the mowing, weedwacking, etc. DH does the heavy/hard stuff. He will mow or weed wack if for some reason I can't, but he asks me 'where' first so that he won't mow things down as he did years ago, because he didn't know what was what.

I agree that it is a lack of interest, not gender.

Thanks for a good laugh this morning.

FlowerLady

I told you it was a can of worms.

But you are all correct it has little to do with gender and more to do with interest. My husband can engineer the largest developments, bring you water service, sewer service, and design roads and bridges, he is all about detail in his life's work. When it comes to the yard or garden his desire is to engineer it into simplicity.

Too many of anything to him, is just too many. He enjoys the color and the vibrancy he just does not want or need to think about every aspect of its creation. That, along with the lawn care are my job, my life's work if you will. I believe that having a non-gardener as a spouse is fun cause you get to teach them and they rarely criticize you for failing with your many attempts to start new species.

Lets here it for the non-gardeners, they are the rocks in the garden that hold us up and keep us from becoming vegetative.

You make a good point zoozue. My hubby is always my rock. I can't really teach him, it's the interest thing again, but he leaves me alone to play in my garden and always is willing to help me move stuff or trim a tree or whatever.
Nancy

It totally is about interest - and my boyfriend is the WORST!!! He hates anything to do with the outside: plants, animals, cutting the grass, ANYTHING!

When we were deciding where to build our house, we could get a bigger lot for a $2000 lot premium. It gave us a 130x80 lot instead of 120x70. The only caveat was that I made him agree to be the grass cutter - mistake number 1!

I am trying to fill the backyard with plants and shrubs - my goal is to have as little grass as possible. Obviously, I am doing this without BF's help. I had 3 baby bouganvillas about 1 foot high each - beautiful colors. He mowed them down so many times they quit trying to grow back! Did he not see the pretty purple, pink, and orange bracts??? UGH!!!!

So, lesson learned, I make sure anything planted in the lawn mowing area is at least 2 feet tall!!!

I've been thinking about this interest thing and part of it makes sense however... My hubby is a music collector and when he starts talking about some obscure band from 1976 I tend of glaze over, just as he does when I talk plants. So neither of us do that much. However if he had his 1,000 plus CD collection laid out on the floor, unless there was no where at all to step I wouldn't step on them. Why, because I see them.... So since there is no interest in plants for the non-gardener does that mean that somehow their vision doesn't see the plants??
Nancy

Here is another dilemma, my non-gardener wife comes out with her scissors to cut flowers for indoor decoration and to take to her job. She also shares flowers with her friends. I like to see them on the plants. But if that is the only participation she takes in the garden then I let her be.
Sometimes I want to tell her about a beautiful flower blooming
but I keep the information to myself so she will not cut it.
I am sure I am alone with this dilemma,No? Lol!

Curiously, I most never step on a vegetable plant but flowers are often invisible to me.........

Nancy, you are using flawed logic in your example...No person is likely to walk over CDs or any plastic and easy to break objects for that matter, whatever their hobby :) On the other hand, it is quite a normal behavior to walk on grass and other vegetation. So, for a non gardener, it is all vegetation. whether it is grass or some pretty flowers; they do not think about it.

I am a female computer scientist and I believe that any gender statement is a gross over generalization.
Easy fix for your dilemma: think of your man as a dear who will go after any vegetation without discrimination and put protection around those plant you do not want messed with :)

i'm a man and i don't step on plants. as for you nancy, well, um, nevermind...

i have the perfect solution: next time trim the palms/bushes yourself.

Oh Please. I'm a man and I move carefully move through my garden like a panther. A PANTHER.

Hey Nancy, I think I dated the drummer from that obscure 1976 band!

My DH however tends to destroy my plastic pots with the weekwacker.

My hubby loves to kill things with the weed wacker! I would do it myself but I can't get it to start... and he wouldn't buy the electric one I wanted! I find that if I threaten to hit his motorcycle with my gardening tools he trims more carefully! :)

The main reason men dont see the plants on the ground is because anything of any interest is usually just below shoulder height. So, if your plants were the height where mens heat seeking radar is most tuned for, you probably wont have any stepped on plants.

I love this thread!!
When I lived in IL, my "black thumb" ex husband decided he wanted to be a farmer and raise "crops" in our city back yard. He proceeded to rip out a number of decades old lilac bushes to make room, burning out the transmission of our car, then decimated a perfectly good tiller that belonged to a neighbor. I wound up buying and planting "his" garden. When I had my fill, I told him to weed it. Yep he did!!!!! pulled up everything I planted and left all the weeds!!! Just for good measure he also pulled up all the azaleas I just planted for a border.
To add insult to injury, I wound up replanting, weeding and caring for a garden I didn't even want. The ultimate insult was when the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and greens were finally ready, he picked them and gave them away letting people know that he grew them himself in his own garden! Next year the garden was turned to lawn, which I wound up mowing. Any wonder he's an EX????

It is because men have a built-in sense of direction that overrides all other faculties. We automatically know where we are or how how to get where we want to be. Call it nature's GPS. Sometimes though, it takes us over or through an area (your flowers for example). But it is how we are wired. Next time you are lost trying to find your way to that store in the country and we find it without a map you will appreciate our abilities a little more.

Bill

I think this is much more about acting out unconscious patterns and passive aggressiveness, regardless the gender.

I have a female family member who occasionally mows our yard. We hire this chore out. (The other person that does this for us, has NEVER forgotten a single plant since his second or third mowing.)

I was out in the front yard and she was taking a break. We were admiring a rescued gardenia that had survived its severe cut back and long trip to my yard two years ago. It was covered with blooms and buds. She is quite a good gardener herself and she loves gardenias. This is a mature person, not a teeny bopper. WHILE I WAS STANDING THERE!!! she nodded, smiled at me and fired up the mower and rammed it right into the 15" plant. Twice! She managed to damage about a third of the plant.