Crop failures help a lot.
6 Likes
Hear, hear! I agree with aging gardener. I turned 73 a few months ago and really feeling it when I’m doing the garden chores. So my advice is to just purposefully simplify what and how much you’re doing. Aside from getting outside help from children, if your blessed with them (the purest definition of gardening), or neighbors who would help in the garden with the understanding that they get some of the production, you might even consider just plain shutting down the garden/orchard. At this point I just can’t give up. My grandfather, a lifelong gardener, worked his garden until the day he passed away. I’m for that pathway…sort of reminds me of The Godfather scene where Marlon Brando dies in his garden chasing after his grandson.
3 Likes
DUDE!!! There’s nothing wrong with you. Press on!
2 Likes
Larissa Lee, you could eat shoes but they’re not very tasty. I think I’m like most of you… wishing some of my neighbors were gardeners just to give us something to talk about.
5 Likes
I tend to the obsessive side, and I can tell when it’s bad because my gardening/tree growing isn’t as fun anymore. I still do it but I’m irritable and spend too much money on it which doesn’t ultimately make me happy. NAC or N-acetyl cysteine has some research on benefitting ocd tendencies. Something to check out. It’s helped me a bit.
6 Likes
When I feel down and discouraged like that, I have a surefire cure. I plant a fruit tree!!
3 Likes
I love the attention to aesthetics in your orchard!
1 Like
So funny! Just yesterday my daughter was oogling at how “fancy” her aunts were in their dresses, and I said, “sorry girlfriend. Mommy likes spending her money on plants.”
3 Likes
On the breaking topic, balance is so vital to life. I think people who rejuvenate outside gardening are able to live and grow with it. But, if it drains more than it enlivens, you need to add more of what makes you happy. I have many time consuming hobbies and little kids. Gardening has never substantially detracted from them until this year. When I went all in on gardening remodels and new fruit trees, my other loves suffered or had to be entirely abandonmed. I got to April entirely burnt out on life and despising the next plant package that was going to show up and suck my time. I dropped the ball on landscaping some family and friends properties because I just was too done with it all. It took a lot of long rides (cyclist) and other hobby endeavors to get back to feeling grounded and enjoy tinkering in my gardens again. It also helped to leave the hoard of new fruit trees alone for a while and switch back to native gardening that is so easy and rewarding: plant, ignore, appreciate 
3 Likes
You speak truth 
One could say “limit your property size” to force it but some, including our Dear Leader, have highly unusually large fruit orchards on extremely normal-sized properties. I recently read a close to 20 year old bestseller about Blue Zones. As you’d expect those who garden prioritize vegetables. Coincidentally this year I about doubled my vegetable garden space and, in addition, finally settled on getting significant pot space for most salad and root crops.
There’s worse things to be obsessed over. I never got obsessed with it but I stopped home brewing because it is not a healthy hobby. I also make far fewer desserts than I used to. There’s also people who don’t even create but are mere “afficianados” of cigars, whiskey, beer, pot or whatever else.
Right when you think you have a handle on it, Starks rolls out $18.16 trees, free shipping.
2 Likes
Bought a Galaxy peach for that price and had no room for it. Had to start another row. Now it looks lonely so I have to get 3 more to even the rows.
4 Likes
spend your time grafting new varieties onto existing trees, and distributing scion from your collection, maybe, I dont know.
I have a potential new family addition this year and most of my previously free time and money has gone to this. So very little time, but fruit trees and perennials saved the day. Annual plants and veggies went away. Luckily I had some starts that I kept alive, but fruit trees just keep going once established. I killed other starts due to neglect. And now my planting budget is really reduced. I’m back to rootstock amd grafting as the $70 fruit trees are right out for me now. As others said, life and illness will cut the obsession down at times, but once a fruitaholic always a fruitaholic…
4 Likes
Wait until next year - there will be more $18.16 trees.
Um, I cannot look at a fruit tree and think about how it needs pruning, or if pruned, how I would do it differently?
1 Like
Accepting boundaries over time as opposed to pushing beyond them.
Your body can be over worked, work less. Your existing garden beds could be full, stop expanding that year. Your bare roots could be transplanted and mulched, so stop procuring plants.
I pick the locations for the next years fruit trees ( or garden beds) over the summer and fall and mulch the ground to push back the grass. It is then easy to transplant or direct seed in winter/spring. But I’m no longer trying to break new ground to accommodate impulses. I make a lot of lists, take inventory of what I have, what I want and rank them by goal or excitement. I then try to stick to that list for the limited planting locations I prepared.
Truth be told rupturing a lumbar disk is what makes me adhere to a system like this. I just can’t physically go nonstop anymore. I hope you can draw a boundary so you can reach an equilibrium in your life.
3 Likes