Your Garden Sitter's Checklist

It's not so easy to hand the care of your garden over to another person. But sometimes, you just have to do it, and you might as well make it as painless as possible for both of you by preparing a checklist, giving a brief tour, and then letting go of all illusions of control over what happens in your absence.

Since one characteristic in common among many gardeners is the enjoyment of bringing order out of chaos, the letting go of all control part is the hardest, and perhaps the most important. So let's save that for the end and start with the easy stuff: the garden sitter checklist and tour.

Keep it simple. Trust your garden caretaker to have some sense, and just give general instructions such as, "Thin the vegetables if they look like they need it. Weed if you're inspired. Harvest whatever is ripe and enjoy it yourself or share it with friends. Water before the plants start to droop from thirst."

Then you can go beyond the general to a few - read, very few - specific requests. If your checklist gets too detailed, the caretaker will be overwhelmed, so choose your special situations carefully. After all, the garden is your labor of love, not hers. She's just doing maintenance.

For example, let's say you have a new asparagus trench that is gradually being filled in as the shoots grow. If you have a pile of topsoil mixed with manure on hand for the interim gardener to use as needed to cover the new asparagus, then ask her to help sustain this long-term crop.

But if you have a patch of spinach that is bolting, don't ask her to keep pinching off the blossoms unless you really really want her to spend valuable time on keeping the spinach going during your two-week vacation.

Then make clear your greatest priority, such as "This is an organic garden, so please use only the supplies in my shed. No Round-up or Miracle Grow, thank you." But in general, your temporary help shouldn't be asked to deal with fertilizing or pest control unless you're going to be gone a long time, or the person owes you a really big favor.

Now, for the tour. Before you leave the precious vegetable or flower garden in a caretaker's hands, make a point of meeting with your garden sitter in person in the garden. Make sure she knows where things are, from watering tools to an emergency number for backup.

Also, make sure she knows what things are. Else, she might pull the joi choi, thinking it's a weed rather than an Asian vegetable.

And that brings us to the letting-go-of-illusions-of-control part of the deal. If she does mistakenly pull the joi choi, oh well. Unless the garden is burnt to a crisp or mowed down, just be grateful that someone was there to care for it as best she could. Who knows? She might even have done some things differently and better than you would have. Then you've got some new tricks up your sleeve.

Expect miracles, and do your best to enjoy whatever it was that temporarily took you away from your garden.