March 18 Column: Competitive Gardening

Have you already read my garden column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review? I do hope it gave you a good laugh. But let me reassure those of you who know me that Bill’s and my marriage is still rock-solid! If you haven’t seen my column yet, the topic is the competitive gardening that’s been taking place in the veggie garden over the last few years. Here’s a link to it: Spouses compete for precious garden space. (or you can read my column lower in this post)

I’ve been married to my awesome husband, Bill, for 40 years now and have to say he is absolutely the BEST. The main garden tasks he’s been taking care of include organic pest control in our small orchard, setting up and maintaining the drip irrigation system, planting the garlic, and tending the grapes, currants and native plantings. That’s a lot of important stuff, right?

Well, apparently those chores aren’t keeping him busy enough. That’s because he’s starting to take more of an interest in the planting of the vegetable garden. Sounds innocent enough, but he wants more of “my” beds for planting certain crops that I don’t have room for. And that’s a bit much! Well, I won’t give away more of my column before you read it.

For this week’s video, I take you on a virtual tour of our veggie garden so you can see what our set-up is. I’ve had requests for this plus I figure you’re going to see a lot of it throughout the gardening season, so this is a good start:

OK, back to Bill… I invited him to be a part of the video but he prefers more to be a behind-the-camera and behind-the-scenes guy. So he’s invisible now, except for the photos above — including his now-famous hands — that is! I think it would be great fun to do the videos together, though. What do you think?

Competitive Gardening column:

by Susan Mulvihill

I never should have taken my husband Bill to hear Ciscoe Morris speak.

Morris, Seattle’s popular garden guru, had come to Spokane. He gave the presentation, “In Separate Beds: How to Maintain a Beautiful Garden Along with Your Marriage.” He and his wife, Mary (also an avid gardener) are well-known for their garden wars over who gets to plant where.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have introduced Bill to Ciscoe Morris afterwards either. When Morris learned that I pretty much call the shots on what gets grown in the vegetable garden, he took Bill aside and said — tongue-in-cheek — “That will never do. You need to stand up for yourself!” Or at least, I think it was tongue-in-cheek.

Now, in my defense, it seems only fair that — as a garden writer — I should be allowed to grow interesting and new varieties of veggies each year. All of this requires quite a lot of space and planning.

Bill’s encroachment into “my” garden started innocently enough several years ago. As a garlic aficionado, he wanted some space to grow a few heads of garlic. That seemed perfectly harmless. But soon he was telling me that if we’re going to grow garlic, we should also grow basil to make pesto. Before I knew it, he wanted more garlic, more basil, a lot more pesto — and subsequently less room for my intended plantings.

Little did I know more trouble was looming on the horizon.

Bill loves to go fishing. It turns out that two of his fishing buddies are also gardeners. That’s great. Or at least it was until they started talking about growing their legendary pepper crops. Bill was intrigued especially since he loves homemade salsa.

He didn’t want to grow the sweet pepper varieties I grew each summer. Oh no. He wanted to grow hot peppers — lots and lots of them. I agreed to surrender a small plot that mysteriously doubled in size by planting time.

Did I mention that Bill absolutely loves sweet corn? Each year, I’ve been planting a large bed of corn that we happily consume in late summer. But it wasn’t enough: he wanted to have extra corn for freezing and eating during the off-season.

The next thing I knew, he was telling me we should plant three extra beds for an even more bountiful harvest in the summer. I had fully planned to use those three beds for growing broccoli and melons. This little tug-of-war was not in my plans.

So when he recently asked to review my carefully penciled-in garden layout for 2018, alarm bells were going off in my head. Surely he didn’t want even more of my garden? And why is he suddenly taking an interest in gourmet onions? I’ve tried crossing my arms and giving him stern looks, but does he notice? Nope.

We’ve been married forever and, to be honest, I couldn’t ask for a nicer husband. But this business of taking over my garden space is getting to be a bit much. I’m beginning to wonder if two people who both enjoy eating good food can successfully garden side by side. Perhaps marital counseling is in order? And if so, do you think I can find a counselor who will show him the error of his ways?