My biggest mistake was ever starting the first place.

I put chicken wire down to keep cats from digging my seeds. I turned it back on it's self to weed and it popped loose. It scratched my eye when it flipped back.

Are we talking $ mistakes, or Emergency Room mistakes?

Thank God, I guess it hasn't happened yet. Well, unless you call buying a house with 10 foot tall, WELL established nandinas and Abelias planted against the foundation, an accident ;).

Other than that, I guess I've been pretty lucky.

Kristi

Stuffing sticks in a trashcan...one lashed back and popped me in the eye. I got a small shiner.PJ

I have such a phobia about things getting in my eyes that I'm wincing just reading these posts!

I'm always accidentally stepping in fire ants and I'm really sensitive to their venom, so it never ends well. *shudder*

Earlier today I was putting some peat moss in my garden. Thanks to the $%@#$!! tree pollen in the air, I'm super stuffy and can hardly breathe. Well, I inhaled really hard in an effort to get some air and my sinuses chose THAT VERY MOMENT to open up briefly. And I sucked in a big cloud of peat moss dust. I'm going to be coughing up Jiffy pellets for weeks.

Oh but if we're talking mistakes as well as accidents, my worst mistake was letting one of my garden beds become overgrown with weeds, unwanted trees, and ants. I should have kept up with it and if I had, I could be using it this spring to plant beans and other goodies. But instead, I'm spending the time trying to get rid of the ants. Then after I get rid of the ants, I'll be busy getting rid of the saplings.

I thought it would be funny to squirt my wife with the garden hose. It was funny, too.

Then, she thought it would be funny if I slept on the couch. She also thought it would be funny if I ate Vienna Sausage instead of her delicious garlic shrimp.

Injury related: it's a tie between falling full on backwards into a tea rosebush, poison ivy, and closing my fingers in the garage door (my gardening stuff lives in there).

Plant related......can't think of too many--I don't have the budget for much so my mistakes aren't too catastrophic. The tomato cage last year was totally useless--why do they bother to make those little wire round things? I had to stake it, tie it to the ground on four sides and cross my fingers that it stayed up in the wind under the weight of six feet of cherry tomato. Oh yes, the hostas out front are probably a mistake...it's too hot here for them to be happy and they get mighty ugly looking by September....not to mention that the snails love them.

RoadHog - So you soaked her down and she provided you with a dry place to sleep and a can of food. Sounds fair to me, maybe too lenient.

LOL, txgardenlady, good one

Mine would be a tie between trying to weedeat my foot off from above the ankle down and trying to clear our creek area of green briar vine, getting tangled in it falling head on into a big rock.
When I came walking out of the path, I thought my DH was going to have a heart attack.
There was more blood than cut, lol being a head wound.
He was screaming "get in the car, no let's clean it up, no get in the car, use the towel, where are the towels, lol
He doesn't do very well in those situations, lol

I told him to calm down, went in got a towel and put it on the cut put my hat over to hold it on. By this time he wasn't in any shape to drive so I giggled all the way to get stitches. I still laugh when I think about it.

Of course, he doesn't think it is as funny as I do, lol

Gardening mistakes, way too many to list, lol
Pulling seedlings thinking they were weeds.
Putting down pre-emergent where I planted seeds
Planting in dry beds with plants that prefer to be watered more and visa versa.
I would get cramps from typing if I listed them all, lol
jolana

forgot the car was behind me as I backed the tiller, got pinned in there, & the tiller kept coming.

I panicked & didn't think to simply release the handle, which would have stopped it.

still have a crater in that ankle.

RoadHog- I don't do couches or Vienna sausages, think I would have gone out and had a steak and got me a motel room.
Jim

Just getting into poison oak, I reckon. Nothing too serious, but definitely worse than poison ivy.

roadhog, you probably did the right thing taking it like a man. LOL!
Hose fights are popular at my house. We had one today in fact! Sadly, I probably look better AFTER the hose fight. PJ

"taking it like a man" leaves a lot to interpretation.

I did climb a chain link fence with a front tine tiller, one time. The higher it goes, the harder it is to release the throttle.
Jim

A couple weeks ago I was digging up one "dwarf" crape myrtle and tripped backwards into another one . . . scratched up my side and back really well, and then tumbled into the yard, where I *rolled* for a few revolutions. Luckily nobody was around to see me. And yeah, I still have scabs and bruises.

Other than that, nothing yet . . . I'm still a noobie, though.

OH, Jolana I've done that too, not just once but twice in a row, it was real smart ouch. I learned quick not to wear flip flops when weedeating.When I was able to use DH weed eater the man machine it would throw a rocks into my legs and I'd be all brused up on my chin bones. I hate that weed eater, DH has even hit me with rocks 20 feet away so I stay inside when that thing is out.
Ant bites is my biggest problem they sometimes hide in the ground and before I know it their all over my feet.

That image of the tiller climbing the fence made me LOL.

You know how it's standard childhood education to tell kids not to run with scissors?

One adult didn't take his refresher lesson on not running with a WHEELBARROW...

Picture...a wheelbarrow full, REALLY full, of dirt. Not just dirt, but carefully prepped soil with manure and other fertilizer, all set to dump into a new, big raised bed. The borders of the bed having already been installed, a ramp is required to get each wheelbarrow-load up and over the lip of the border to dump.

Picture...a man pushing that full wheelbarrow. Excited about the garden-to-be. Kind of in a hurry to get a certain amount of dirt moved before it got too dark.

This man has a sense of balance - even while sober - slightly less honed than that of a one-legged, blind, stoned-drunk sailor. After a full day of gardening, he has about as much strength left in his legs, back and arms as a strand of linguini that's been cooked in a crockpot for 3 days.

So...he's pushing that wheelbarrow, leaning into it...taking a few quick steps to build momentum to go up that ramp...getting up to the speed of a slow run...

Up the ramp (with the wheelbarrow) he goes.
To the top.
Almost.
Bad Old Mr. Gravity intervenes, at the precise moment the man's body's momentum overtakes the now-stalled wheelbarrow...

He flops face-first, shoe-soles-to-the-sky into the dirt in the wheelbarrow.

But it's not over yet. Mr. Gravity isn't done.

The jostling combined mass of man and wheelbarrow now reverses its initial direction on the ramp. Down it slides, backward on the ramp. With his last ounce of strength and recoiling in shock at his new eyeful, noseful and mouthful of dirt, the man does a reflexive, explosive push-up on the dirt...

And flops backwards, half-rotating, legs buckled and twisted, somewhat to the side of the ramp and on the ground outside the bed, flat on his back.

At this point, it's a foregone conclusion that the now independently operating wheelbarrow is going to obligingly tip and dump its load of dirt - and itself - DIRECTLY on the man's face and chest.

It couldn't have been staged more perfectly if it had been drawn as a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

I'll admit to being that man here. DW doesn't know this happened.

I sure enjoyed the yard shower I took with the hose, after that. And somehow, I got away with brushing my teeth BEFORE supper, without DW noticing and asking why. Fortunately, no serious injury, just bruises and a sore back and knee for a few days.

So mind your momentum whenever you go up a ramp with a wheelbarrow!

These are some funny stories now, lol
Rap, you are soooo busted now. I'm so glad you weren't hurt, well except maybe pride, lol
Tillers are scary sometimes, lol

My worst has to be when I stepped off the patio and twisted my ankle. (Had a severe ankle injury several years ago and it's never been quite as strong as it was before that.) Fortunately, I had my cell phone in my pocket so I was able to call my parents for help.

Using a weed eater while I was wearing shorts. Tripped over the cord and squeezed down on the trigger while the darn thing was near my foot and "weeded" a swath of my ankle. Good thing I was wearing shoes and socks. I had several deep gouges above the sock line and lots of bruises where the socks covered.

I never mow or edge without long pants but thought I'd be OK since it was just a small patch that I'd missed earlier. Too lazy to change clothes. I also learned to carry the weed eater by the shaft and not the handle where the trigger is (lol).

Still have a few scars.

Oh, I'm laughing so hard, there are tears everywhere. Ya'll are funny. Stitches, it's too darn bad you don't have a video of that, you would make money and become famous on the internet.

So far we've learned that weed eaters are related to most garden accidents, followed closely by rogue stick lashings and dirt with attitude - and altitude.

Not so adventurous here. Mine is limited to trying to pull the store trellis off of a mandevillaea and cutting myself on the cheese ball tacks the thing was held together by. It's only year two though, so I'll you all posted.

When I lived in the Southeast, we used bales and bales of pine straw to mulch landscape beds. We had an extra bale we couldn't use right then, so I set it aside in a corner of the yard. Many weeks later, I went to get the bale to use it.

I hoisted the bale up against my legs, even though I was wearing shorts, and walked toward an area, bumping the bale against my legs as I walked.

What I didn't know was that a bunch of hornets or bees had thought to make that bale their home and came flying up at me, quite angry, stinging my legs and arms.

I dropped the bale and ran toward the garage frantically trying to wave off the flying army. Luckily, I lost most of them as I ducked into the garage and they went off elsewhere. I was glad that I had leather gloves on so I could swat at and kill the hornets/bees that were on me in mid-bite. Netted only 10 bites so I considered myself quite fortunate.

Cleared the entire yard after a freeze wearing a bikini. It was a house we rented and I had no idea the yard was full of poison ivy.
I missed a month of work and took steroids for 2 months. I had to sleep on the couch wrapped in towels because of all the fluid seeping out everywhere from my rash.

Then I got poison ivy 2 BLOCKS from that house when the dog got tangled in weeds & I reached down to free him. I already had a rash and everywhere I scratched I got poison ivy-the resins were under my nails. Steroids for another 6 weeks and 3 weeks of missed work. We live 3 blocks from the house I used to rent.

I don't go that way anymore!

Luckily I don't own a weed eater or I'm sure I would use it to try and chop off body parts.
I did sit in a mound of fire ants to pull weeds last summer, right after the poison ivy cleared. Got a great black eye from a branch that came back and hit me while I was trimming bushes. Pulled fireweed one day before work and had to call in because my hands were so swollen I couldn't type.
And like PJ I look better AFTER the waterhose fight. I seem to attract mud to my body, I feel like pigpen when I garden. Cheap mudbath.
Tally HO!

LOL! Beachplant, your employers must be VERY understanding! :)

Tally, truly, I am sorry for how garden-accident trouble finds you like it does! But must admit, the way you tell about it makes it impossible not to laugh (and feel unwashably guilty for it!). Here is hoping the next 'cane blows in the right direction through your neighborhood, miraculously if necessary, to strip-out all that poison ivy and drown it forever in the Gulf, leaving your own home and plant heaven intact!

I thought sandradee was going to say FIRE ANTS. The flying bugs with stingers are worse, though! I have been greeted by a swarm of fire ants after picking up a pile of pine straw (not a bale - not strong enough) - after raking together and leaving the pile sit on the ground less than 24 hours.

Ya know...Ive been weed eating for about 20 some odd years...completely without misshap. And just today, Im sitting here looking at my ankle and it liteally looks like a badger was gnawing on it. I counted and it looks like about 14 lashes. ...I really have not felt this stupid in quite a while. No offense intended to the rest of the Weed Eater misshap community, but I mean COMMON! How stupid are we?? Ok wait, look: really fast plastic string - leg - cutting down vegitation left and right with horrifying efficiency- ......poor defenseless leg - deafening roar of 2 cycle power!!! - ...ankle.

It stands to reason any sane person would take appropriate measures to thwart our lawn appliances' attempts at removing our body parts. ...but not I....