Worst (and funniest) Garden Mistakes and Legends

16 years ago

Time to start another one of these threads. Post your best, your worst, your funniest gardening mistakes and experiences.

Mine is simple: I was out in my front yard preparing to use a selective weed spray on the lawn. My dad comes over to discuss some rental property we own and to confess a terrible mistake he made regarding leasing to a bad tenant. Of course I had told him not to accept this tenant, but nevertheless, he did and it was up to me to evict her. I was furious and squawking and shooting the spray into the weed patches in the lawn while I ranted. I had vowed that if he did not take my advice I would not step in and save the day..he didn't listen....arugh arugh arugh.

When he left and I had finished with the spot treatment, I looked in my hand and realized that I was using grass killer and had blown the crap out of my yard. A week later, my front yard looked like a bomb site.

How about YOU?

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Comments (20)

donn_
16 years ago
I have too many to remember (and I've trained (aged?) my brain to forget them), but the most recent booboo is still fresh in my mind.

I forgot to watch the temperature in my cold frame on a cool but sunny day, came back indoors to the sound of the alarm, and found the temperature had gotten to 130Â°F!

I cooked a couple of gifted Tomato seedlings, a couple of dozen Pepper sprouts and various other brand new sprouts.

What good is a wireless remote thermometer system, if you aren't near the base station to hear the alarm go off?
PVick
16 years ago
My very first year of WSing, actually my first time growing anything other than tomatoes and marigolds, I grew the most beautiful coneflower. It flowered that year, too - two really pretty pinkish blooms.

Well, as the season progressed, the flowers faded and the plant itself began to fade away. When the foliage was all dried up, I figured it was dead and pulled it and dumped it.

I didn't know that it was a perennial.

I haven't been able to get seed-grown echinaceas to grow properly for me since. (But I did buy one last year that's looking good.)

PV
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susan926
16 years ago
I remember our first house, our first summer I wanted to plant some flowers in the garden. I went to the nursery bought a flat of flowers and planted the whole flat in one spot. Duh, no one ever told me to divide the little plants when you put them into the ground.But I soon learned:)
mamimo
16 years ago
I guess this would be my worst (smelling) one. 2 weeks ago, I was out spraying my sprouts with liquid fence with a pump sprayer. Liquid fence is a foul smelling concoction of overpriced rotten eggs used as a rabbit deterrent. I had also mixed in some fish emulsion as well, so the brew was really potent. Ugh.

The sprayer stopped working and stupid here set the pump sprayer down, removed the wand to shake out what was stuck in there. Now I learned,
1) never shake a wand that's full of smelly goop vigorously. I got a good sprinkle of that stuff on myself.
2) never set the pump sprayer down with its spout facing me. Whatever was stuck there got unstuck and a nice jet of that stuff hit me.
carrie630
16 years ago
Years ago, of course before learning about wintersowing or growing seeds in containers, I decided I was going to buy a packet of seeds and disperse them near the front of the house. Not knowing very much, at that time, about flowers, the picture of morning glories looked somewhat like the annual petunias I would buy every year. I thought morning glories was a type of petunia (don't laugh, this was a long time ago...) It was a quick buy and I never paid attention to the packet - they just "looked" like petunias. Anyway, I scattered the seeds and when the MGs came up, I thought they were petunias. The next year, the MGs reseeded and well I was thrilled that I had planted perennial petunias (I know this is stupid, but true....). I wanted to find another packet and asked anyone and everyone where I could find perennial petunia seeds. Needless to say, no one had an answer for me. Silly... but true.

Carrie
trudi_d
16 years ago
About eight or nine years back I started understanding the value of turning greens and browns into the soil to improve water retention, add nutrients, etc. I was clearing a bed of some fast-growing groundcover sedum and decided it would be much easier to turn in all that Sedum acre insted of simply ripping it up and tossing it in the trash. I added additional amendments and wound up with a few inches of soil more than I wanted it. So I dug some out and spread it about the entire garden. And with it I also spread about all those little itty bitty chopped up pieces of Sedum acre.

Unspeakable horrors!

Every single little itty bitty chopped up piece of Sedum sprouted and in that newly enriched soil took off like there's no tomorrow. To this day I am still yanking that crap out of my garden. Grrrr.
shoe_
16 years ago
I winter sowed Rudbeckia Green Wizard and really wanted this plant! I noticed that something was eating the leaves off the the plant, so I grabbed the rabbit repellant....but I accidently grabbed the Round Up....my plant died! Did you know that bottles of Round Up is the same shape as many other types of sprays??
I have been trying to get all my ws plants in the garden. I am almost done and had a few Hyacinth Bean Vine to get in the ground. I tipped the pot over, and found my packet of seeds! I put the pack of seeds in the pots they are going to go in to save an extra step...and ended up planting the entire pack! Thank goodness they were in a plastic bag!
highalttransplant
16 years ago
Well, this may not be my "worst" mistake, but it's my most recent. In late winter, my English daisies had actually started to bloom. Then another round of winter weather and they seemed to die back a bit. Well, recently I noticed that they were growing again and quite vigorously, but the leaves looked a bit different. But I said to myself, what are the odds of the same weed growing only in the spots where my two English daisies were. So the other day, my DH, who is not into gardening at all, takes one look at them and said "Are you sure that isn't Milkweed your growing there?" ... and he was right!
moonphase
16 years ago
Like Donn,I have made too many to remember over the yrs,but I will show you my most recent horror.What is so bad,,I knew better..Don't ask me why I planted this horrible plant...lol but I do remember picking them as a child where they grew wild along the streets of Atlanta.We called them buttercups back then.Maybe I was planting a memory..I don't know..I need a shrink..lol Now,today,I have to pull up all of these and it will be a few yrs before I get it out of my bed.They have almost taken this whole bed over.I think it is named Othenera or some such.
moonphase
{{gwi:391911}}
carrie630
16 years ago
The pink flowers in the front (they are Evening Primose - right? (can't tell by the picture)... Well, I have them and they spread like crazy too. They are so pretty but you have to put them somewhere where they have their own space.
It looks so pretty where you have them and the pink flowers next to them are a knockout!!

Carrie
deborahz7
16 years ago
The tulip bed at the end of the driveway can't be seen unless you stand right in front of it. I didn't realize I planted short tulips. I wanted it to be wowzers from the street but its not visible. This will need reworked in the fall.
deborahz7
16 years ago
Also, earlier this year DH borrowed a co-workers truck so we could bring home 2 loads of compost. We worked hard all weekend to unload it all. He cleaned up the truck and was happy to be returning it home Sun. around 4. He backed out of the driveway and ran right over the shovel which punctured the tire. It took him until 9:30 to get the tire off and a replacement put on so he could take the truck back.

Now we're both more careful about looking for tools on the driveway.
drippy
16 years ago
I WSed cirsium arvense (creeping thistle) for my herb garden.

'Nuff said.
mudinmyshorts
16 years ago
One fine June day I decided I'd get a bit of a tan while weeding a freshly watered bed. Wearing gym shorts and no shirt I fell backwards arse first into a very soggy portion of the bed. Hence the name ...
mceller
16 years ago
My first adventure into gardening I visited a nursery and bought several of these beautiful plants with big leaves, red / white/ pink / green/ red.. I now know I can buy bulbs but.. then I only saw beauty!

I was so proud!

I called my sister "the gardener"!

"You will be soooo proud" I proclaimed! "I planted this beatiful garden full of CLAMIDIA!!!!!!!

Later that night I woke with a start -- No way, I did not say that... but.. alas.. I did..

I will never look at caladium in the same way again!
THEGARDENPOOTER
16 years ago
My funniest and worst garden mistake is that I planted obediant plant and morning glories about ten years ago in little bunched flower beds surrounding my vegetable garden which is urban lot that a huge house used to be. I AM STILL FIGHTING BOTH! It got so bad one year i was afraid of the very back of my garden, it was worse than a jungle! I wonder why no one told me that obediant plants are not obediant? I KNOW NOW!!!!!

The Garden Pooter!
beckilove
16 years ago
thegardenpooter - I can totally understand your frustration with those. When I first started my flower garden, I planted some morning glories along a small fence. The didn't do anything, so I planted a rose bush nearby, and hollyhock on the other side of the fence. Now, those darn morning glories come up every single year and try to choke out my other things! It is so frustrating! I pull them out as soon as I spot them, but, alas, they just keep shooting up! As beautiful as many kinds of morning glories are, I have sworn them off. Not for me!
laurelin
16 years ago
I made the mistake last year of not yanking bindweed as soon as it appeared in my garden. Sure, I pulled some of it, but I wasn't vigilant by a long shot. ('Twas the "YEAR OF THE FLOOD" as well as "THE YEAR OF THE CAR ACCIDENT," so I can only plead over-whelmed-ness, not ignorance.) Anyhow, the bindweed LOVED my laissez faire gardening last year, and I'm paying for it in spades this year.

Laurel
new_in_texas
16 years ago
Last year was my first year to get dirt under my nails in WCentral TX.
- The most expensive mistake was planting a full afternoon sun front bed of approx 15 1-3g shrubs in the middle of June. I thought that watering them every day would help, so they either fried or I drowned them or a combo of both.
- Not remembering that quite a few things were perennials and throwing them away once they started to fade
- Not realizing what sq feet equals, I was still used to metric. So my little patch of wildflower seed I sowed in the fall really should've been spread out a bit more, okay a lot more.
- Just because the garden center sells it, doesn't mean
A) that it will 'work' here
B) that it is the correct time to plant it

Worst (and funniest) Garden Mistakes and Legends

Comments (20)

donn_

PVick

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