I also cut a cable cord! Fortunately, it wasn't being used by anyone around me at the time.
I was out this spring trying my hand at the hedge trimmer, which I had never used. Being a rather small woman of only 5'4", I had some trouble holding up the trimmer and cutting through tons of overgrown branches. I went to turn around to look at something, wasn't paying attention to where the trimmer was, and sliced through the cable cord that traveled down the pole! I could have sliced up myself or been electricuted! Stupid, stupid, stupid! I ran inside the house and waited for neighbors to come charging up to my door, asking why their cable was out!
After that, I called a landscape company to finish the job at $200! But it was worth it!
btw, the hedges are a 30 ft long line of bushes in the front of my house. Probably about 8 or 9 ft tall. See pic:

{{gwi:15652}}

Just because the instructions say you can run the cable in or on the soil with no protection, does not mean it is a good idea. I keep all my low voltage and media cables in conduit buried in the garden. I do hit the conduit occasionally but have never damaged the wire. Al

Buying the most expensive landscape fabric to lay on a 60ft. x 10 ft. bank. Then pulling it all up realizing what i had planted will not fill in.

Running the lawnmower over the water hose. I was in a hurry and forgot to move it.

Mowing too close to the water meter cover in our front yard! Yep, i hit it......it was time for a new blade anyways....lol.

Putting down landscape fabric with rock mulch. Two REALLY stupid things in one fell swoop.

moving into my home and pulling all the weeds(plants) out and throwing them away and later finding out from a neighbor what beautiful flowers WERE here the year before!

One of the stupidest ones was tilling up the gas line. I have propane, and was responsible for burying the line. Needless to say, it wasn't very deep, and I totally forgot about it when tilling up a bed beside the house. I noticed it immediately (tiller stopped because it was all tangled up with copper tubing) and ran and turned the gas off at the tank.

A lot of the things I have planted, and where I planted them was pretty stupid, but gardening is a life long lesson, don't you think?

Sue

Like many people I have a ditch garden in front yard.
I filled with snap dragons cone flowers tall phlox peony dafadills cushion spurge ditch lily. ect. an all seasons garden.
my biggest mistake was letting a huge ground hog scare me away from tending it for a whole year. DH finally got it.
Well
weeds took over and i just couldn't get them under control so I planted goats feet?bishops weed? what ever it is., looks great in the spring but ugly in summer so I planted every invasive I could find to fill it out.
loosestrife obedience and siberian iris bunch of other stuff.
what a mess
looks horrible. but silly neighbors think it's gorgeous.
It has no flow...
and still tons of weeds.
the only cool thing is the peonys survived and do look cool surrounded by goats feet.
all in all big mistake to let a GIANT rodent scare me away.or was it the goats feet?
still tempted to just spray round up on the whole thing.
the only thing stopping me is all my daffadils, and tulips and crocuses and peony and....

Putting down black plastic was the worst for me. It's still there and I pull it up a little at a time when I plant things but none of the enrichment of mulch or soil additions ever get to the roots of the plants where that stuff is. I hope to redo the beds this fall or winter and get it all out. It's in two different ones.

I've done the landscape fabric and white rocks before too. You'd think I'd learn!

Believing I could control an overly aggressive plant (Bishop weed comes to mind).

Thinking it would be really pretty to plant a full sun bed, complete with roses, next to a young redbud tree. Like the tree would never grow!!!

Deanna

Being busy with other things and not putting away the garden hose before winter, then later getting it all wrapped up in the dang snowblower, lol

Having the battery of the riding mower blow up in my face, I had been careless with using the booster cables ... I never did tell anyone about this, thankfully, I had not been injured, though my ears were left ringing from the explosion.

Stepping on the garden rake, just like you've seen in the cartoons ... yes, it really whacks a person in the head!

Always digging things up or scratching around to see if there's new shoots coming, then of course breaking these off and sometimes killing the plant :(

But, most stupid mistake is being a plant hungry workaholic! I often do not have time nor energy left in the day to get around to properly tending everything I have ... yet, I keep going to the nurseries and looking through the catalogues for my next acquisitions ... yep, it's an addiction!

Was potting up some aquatic plants for my 150-gallon pond this Spring, and thought I'd use up some left-over chicken manure by mixing with the aquatic soil. Bad mistake! About 2 weeks later I basically had 150 gallons of manure tea! Took about 2 months for the algae to clear and the water to return to normal, even with periodic draining and re-filling.

Probably the time I found bags of dirt at one of those dollar store dealies. I was so happy to get such a great deal that I didn't pay attention to what the bag said.

I potted my annuals (years ago, when all I planted was annuals) in what turned out to be very low quality topsoil. Besides the scores of weeds I got, the pots were so waterlogged and heavy that all the annuals died.

Years ago, as a brand new gardener, I planted hundreds of spring bulbs in one area. Not one came up. Never completely sure why but guess is that it was a wet area and they all rotted. Felt really foolish after bragging to neighbors that we could look forward to a plethora of beautiful flowers in spring.

Another one I did! Last autumn I planted 15 Allium bulbs (5 Globemasters, 5 Ambassadors, and 5 WHITE GIANTS) in a raised bed of 7 ft long by 3.7 ft wide. What a mistake! I never realized just how LARGE the allium leaves could get! I waited till they were ready to be cut down and I replanted them along a hedge. BUT, now I don't know how they'll do where their new home is! Because, now they are in the ground and not raised. Live and learn I guess!
I may have made another dummy mistake too.
I ordered 8 TB iris bulbs from Blue J Iris this past February. Had a great place to put them when they come in next week. I went to look at where they were to be planted and realized I had (inadvertently lol) planted a new impulse buy hydrangea in it's place this summer! NOW, what the heck am I going to do with the 8 irises coming in next week??? Dummy!

We moved from Vermont years ago on a cold[-35f]degree day in Feb to Middle Tennesee. The movers plowed 3 feet of snow off the lawn to get the van as close as possible. I was very eager to start my gardens in the new house. I replanted three times because I did not realize where it was sunny or shady. It pays to wait till the leaves come out! But it was so beautiful and warm.

Not putting more thought into the sprinkler system. In retrospect, it seems like the best place for the sprinklers would be in the center of the lawn so they are unobstructed and spray the beds around the perimeter. I did tell the installer where the beds would be - but he put the sprinklers around the edge of the yard where they would, theoretically, spray inward. Well needless to say the majority of them are right in the garden and are obstructed by plants. Moving plants around to accommodate poorly positioned sprinklers, and changing sprinkler heads to those ugly tall ones to get over the tops of plants, is an ongoing endeaver at my house.

Planting Oenothera speciosa 'Siskiyou' -- what a rampage!

Oh, without a doubt for me, it was planting an entire bed (about 25) of dahlias in a brand new bed that I had just made by digging up the grass and adding about 4 inches of topsoil onto the top. Then, waiting, waiting, waiting for them to come up. After about 1 1/2 months and no dahlias, I decided to check on them and dig a couple up. Completely rotted, the only thing left was the outer covering! Bed was holding water, too, too wet. Dug the bed when there had been no rain for a while and had no idea it held that much water until AFTER I lost every dang one of them. All sizes, Dinnerplates and everything! Uggghhhh!

hostaholic,

I just put landscape fabric beneath a rock garden..... Depressing to hear that those are two stupid ideas. What disaster can I expect? Weeds everywhere? If landscape fabric doesn't work, what are the alternatives???

Hmmm, can't decide. The purple morning-glory? The running bamboo? No, the horsetails. Wait!!! The cute little violets!
Renee

It's a 100 degrees outside. It has been unbearably hot and humid since mid May. Nothing new. It's like this every year and I've been doing it since 1985. So just having come inside from my daily watering, at this point I must say that my stupidest gardening mistake was not finding a nice, cool indoor hobby instead. Ask me this question again in the fall.

Letting my MIL plant lily of the valley and campanula glomerata in one of my beds when I first moved in. It was an empty area and she was trying to help me out. This was in 2000/2001 and I'm STILL trying to get rid of them. Arggg.

Planting a ninebark too close to the deck, moving it in the spring, watching it grow some more and realising it's STILL TOO CLOSE!!!

Planting Morden Blush roses near the back of the bed. Honestly, I have no idea where my brain in...they only grown 2 ft tall and that is a wide bed!!

Putting up burlap wind fences too late in the winter..I was dealing with quite a bit of winter browning on my newly planted evergreens. Luckily, they bounced back with flying colors this year.

Thinking that I could "remember" where I've planted everything, without plotting it all out on paper, or having labels for everything. I have a list of all the plants I own, with pictures, but I don't know where anything is until it grows! Very aggravating for bulb planting in the fall...

Not doing research before undertaking gardening projects. Nothing was growing so over the years had to do the research and redo everything I did to create the proper conditions! I feel hope when it's not my fault though. I planted compact Agastache which turned out to be 4' tall and shaded everything else in my garden. I moved it yesterday and feel so good about it. Even though I am well aware of this huge gardening fault I still jump into things without researching.

I know this is an old thread but I wanted to add mine. My biggest gardening mistake ever was sitting down on bare earth during the summer to dead head some Dianthus. I had unknowingly sat down on a patch of chiggers which easily found there way through my cotton shorts and underwear and made themselves at home in my butt cheeks. A chigger is a tiny red insect smaller than the head of a pin. It burrows into your skin and secrets a liquid that liquefies the surrounded flesh which it then eats. Once its fed it falls out and from what I understand its actually gone before the itching starts. This may sound horrible but it really just creates an (really) itchy red bump no bigger than a flea bite an. While they are annoying they are not usually to bad. Having several hundred of them on your butt is miserable. Covering them with clear nail polish will stop the itching. My husband painted each and every bite 1 at a time. He lost count somewhere over 400. It took months for the little tiny scars to fade. I have a garden mat now.

Ouch that sounded painful redunicorn! My worst mistake was being impatient and moving plants when they were starting to sprout in the spring and ended up loosing a couple of them. I have learned since that you should wait until they are a couple of inches tall.

Second mistake, ducks! They don't go well with plants but they sure are cute!

Easy - my buddy and I had a wheelbarrow loaded with dirt - it was uber heavy so we decided it would be smart if both of us took one side of the wheelbarrow and worked as a team.

That lasted no more then 1/2 second as we assumed each of us would lift at the exact same time with the exact same effort.

In less then 1/2 second the barrow was on it's side and we were on the ground laughing.

And we wonder why my wife gets worried about use?

Here is a link that might be useful: Lasagna Gardening for beginners blog

transplanting aegopodium("what a pretty leaf!") into our formerly virgin property.we still suffer the consequences
23 years later.
best,
mindy
www.cottonarboretum.com/

coolplantsguy said "Planting Oenothera speciosa 'Siskiyou' -- what a rampage!"

I know the feeling, three years later and still pulling it out. The funny part is there is an area where we wouldn't mind it taking over and we can't get it to grow there for diddly squat.

I'm on my second year of 'serious gardening' (www.farmerdave.us for photos). So far I've made a TON of mistakes, but it's a great way to learn.

1. Don't plant stuff out just because it's in the garden
center! Put in 2 dozen lettuce plants (we eat TONS of salad) in March on a sunny day - next day it snowed, then dropped below 30. Had a bed full of mush...

2. I once thought that spearmint would be nice in our front flower beds... so I planted 20 plants - by the time we sold the house, there was NOTHING ELSE alive in that bed - just
a WALL of mint, and it had popped up all over in the lawn.

3. Don't plant bulbs in containers in the fall! Lost all my expensive Saffron Crocus and 10 pots of garlic over the winter freeze.

4. If you don't know if you have slugs, plant Basil! I now grow it in pots sitting on a sunny concrete patio. They
completely devoured 6 new basil transplants in ONE NIGHT.

I have LOTS more... but that's a start :)

RainyPNW

Here is a link that might be useful: My 2010 Garden Blog

It's funny, no matter how much we learn by making mistakes, we just keep doing it! Gardening is a never ending project, and so is making mistakes! I just keep doing it!lol
I've made yet another dousy I think. Never plant daffodils in your rose bed. I never thought about the fact that they would multiply and be impossibly hard to get out! I have many that I have to lift and toss or divide this fall too! Ugh!

Oooh, RedUnicorn! I do that all the time, I did it last night! BUT...I will never do it again thanks to reading your post, thank you for the warning!

And I agree with a lot of folks here, stupidest mistake? Black plastic. Black plastic. Black plastic.
DON`T DO IT!!

Ouch. I have done many things listed here..:-)
And...
- stepping on the tines of my rake & whacking my head with the handle...more than once too
- cutting the extension cord while trimming the hedge with an electric hedge clippers.

kentstar, I just added a rose in front of daffs, [g] at some point I will have to divide I suppose, but why is it hard? We prune the r*oses close to the ground every spring which I thought would make for easy access, no?

Nutmeg, we put landscape f*abric down for weeds around the base of a tree. It was the old kind about 15 years ago and it was just about plastic. I forgot it was there and somehow it worked it's way into the soil and the roots of the tree attached itself to it. It was a bear to get out and I still find little pieces of it once in awhile. We have used landscape fabric again though. [g] Just not the old plastic kind. This type is more like f*abric. We don't put it in growing beds any more either. In paths around the raised vegetable beds and under the fence line where the neighbor's grass keeps coming under and under a bark mulch path.

pitimpinai, I think my DH did that once with the hedge clippers. Amazing he wasn't electrocuted. [g]

This thread is too funny!

I've done the landscape fabric, "whack self in face with rake", tip over the wheel barrow, and mow over the hose mistakes too. Fortunately we don't have chiggers here. :)

But my biggest gardening mistake is really embarrassing, and let's just say it was an unfortunate incident that involved a 16 foot ladder and pruning saw, that resulted in a broken bone and TKO (and I was lucky it wasn't worse). I still go up ladders, but don't trim branches anymore!

My roses are climbers so I don't prune down to the ground. I want them long and lush! Oh well, I'll probably have to live with the daffs too. They are lovely when blooming, it's the afterbloom that is a pain. It took until late July last year to cut down the brown foilage!

Planting lily of the valley, sweet woodruff, grape hyacinths and not aggressively going after the Spanish bluebells that were already here.

Also not paying more attention to digging and amending holes for Clematis and using barriers against neighbor's tree roots for them too.

I bet that no one has had this experience. Wisteria. Bad plant for not just me but for my neighbor. Unbeknownst to us he had a leak in his pipes. The Wisteria roots invaded same and next thing you know he's showering while looking at Wisteria vine. A whole new bathing experience....Of course I never dreamed what the term invasive meant when it came to this plant. I kept the top part of the Wisteria meticulously pruned but I was just dumber then a post about what the roots were doing. If you don't care for yourself, care about your neighbor. Read before you plant anything that is even moderately invasive. Your neighbor will thank you.

Roto tilling up 1/4 acre of reed canary grass, scattering $100 worth of wildflower seed and raking it in. Then wondering what happened one month later when the canary grass was eyeball high and thanking me very much for rejuvenating it.

Oh I know the wisteria thing far too well! One spring a sprig showed up on our fence row. My mom (she and dad were living in their camper in our yard through the winter months) was enchanted with this lovely flower right outside her window. We gave in to her begging not to rip it out of the ground. And the result several years later was that the "little sprig" spread one direction 100 feet (and was climbing all over our neighbors old, unused barn). And it spread at least 100 feet down the fence row in the opposite direction. And sprigs were showing up like 150 feet on the opposite side of our house from where it had begun. We were SO glad to move away from the problem. I laid awake one night trying to figure out how the heck we could possibly ever beat it! Since we sold unexpectedly in the winter time (the house hadn't even been for sale), didn't even think about the wisteria plant.
Hey, the new owner had earth moving equipment...so he likely could handle the project of erradication.

And when we moved into our new house we discovered the owner had, according to she who as evidenced by the rest of the yard really knew nothing about gardening, planted a non-invasive variety of wisteria. We weren't about to take her word for that one! Our first act as home owners was ripping the wisteria out of the ground and making sure every sprig went into the trash to be picked up and hauled away from the curb.
dell

Mowing the lawn barefoot with an electric lawnmower.

Easy.

Pulling what I thought was a deadly nightshade vine off a tree. It was poison ivy.

Ouch.

The reason I consider this my stupidest mistake is that I keep doing it year after year, and as soon as the last frost date nears, I will do it again this year.

My beds have been established for a while. I've been trying not to create any new beds because of all the upkeep. Yet every winter, I cannot resist sowing a small variety of annuals in large quantities. Because I don't have one large vacant spot, I go outside with my flats and stuff the new plants willy nilly (despite my actual design plan) in any spots I can find. It always seems just so clever at the time, but mid summer as everything is starting to go into full bloom, I realize that the willy nilly look just didn't work (maybe for some, but not for me). I remember standing back and looking at my first real bed 14 years ago and saying I will never do that again. Yet here I am with several flats of 3 different plants that will get stuffed willy nilly into my beds. Ugh.

Alphabetically?

I had dug out a flower bed in early/mid April in my backyard and I was very anxious to get my plants planted. I bought several perennials at my local nursery and asked around whether or not it would be okay if I planted them right away (late April). The workers there said "Yes, plant them right away because they've already been hardened off and they'll become more root-bound the longer you wait." So I planted them. In the next couple of days I noticed they were being devoured by something, which I found out to be crane fly larvae. I pulled them all out at Midnight on Sunday and repotted them (literally three days after I had planted them). A week later I planted them again, with some barriers like toothpicks and paper towel rolls... And I know that toothpicks and paper towel rolls are best used against cutworms but they seemed to help with the crane fly larvae.

But then we had 3 nights in a row of frost advisories/freeze warnings and I again had to go take care of my plants and had to cover them up. So for about three weeks I had one crazy thing after another. I was afraid my plants would either be completely devoured or frozen to death. Next year I will just wait until mid/end of May to plant.. as the crane fly larvae will stop feeding by this time and there will, hopefully, be no more freezing nights.