Stop telling first-time volunteers to "just jump in" with no training

I saw this happen at a community garden cleanup last weekend. New person shows up, eager to help, and the coordinator says "just grab a tool and start weeding." Three hours later the newbie had pulled up half the strawberry plants because they couldn't tell the difference between runners and actual weeds. I spent 45 minutes replanting everything. Why do we keep doing this? It's not that hard to give someone a five-minute orientation. Has anyone else had to fix damage from this kind of "help"?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_elizabeth21d ago

Strawberry plants? That's wild, someone spent real time on that mistake lol.

shane_wilson21d ago

Lol no kidding! I did the same thing last spring actually. Planted what I thought were gonna be these huge beefsteak tomatoes but I mixed up my seed packets and ended up with a whole patch of tiny cherry tomatoes instead. Spent like two months watering and weeding them before I realized, felt like such a dope. At least with strawberries you get something tasty out of it, I ended up with basically grape sized tomatoes that I couldn't even sell at the farmers market.