ACK!!! Horrible, horrible blunder !!!

OMG! I have made a horrible mistake!

WARNING: The nature of this post may not be suitable for reading by those who grow, care for, and love morning glories!

I have made a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE mistake!!! One of those kind that you wish you could do a rewind to prevent ...

I was outside earlier cleaning out my little waterfall/pond. And then decided to water some of my MG vines while I was out there. I have rain water in a cleaned out milk jug, so proceeded to water several of my table-top potted MGs. You know the ones ... Chinese Evening Glory, Alamo Vine, False Japanese Bindwind, and a couple of others as well as 6 in-the-ground MGs along my picket fence. They looked a little wilted so figured I was out there, might as well give them each a much needed drink.

I decided to go get the hose and just water all of them. Pulled the hose around and stopped to decide which end of the picket fence to start with and got this strong ... and I mean really strong whiff of bleach. I am thinking ... I only put a small capful of bleach in the waterfall, why is the smell so strong? And then I had this sudden flash of horror! I looked over to the patio and saw the gallon jug I had just put down ... YEP! YOU guessed it! I had watered my MGs with pure bleach. Right out of the Chlorox bottle!!! ACKKKKKKKKKKK!!! Not diluted, but pure toxin, watering at least 10 plants around the soil/roots with BLEACH!!!

I am thinking! OMG, is there anything I can do??? I just killed ... no MURDERED my precious MG plants! And these were some of my "special" ones! My personal PRIZE vines! No! ... it couldn't have been the ones I've already collected seeds from that are dying anyway ... NO! It was my precious few that I have been taking such good care of. I got that sick feeling in my stomach ... you know that feeling ...

I looked down at the hose nozzle in my hand and thought, "I gotta DILUTE the bleach!" ... so I took the hose and literally blasted the soil and even a few MG roots right out of the pots and ground. I I just kept flushing the roots with water as all the soil was overflowed out of the pots and the ground concrete rings! When I got finished, you could see bare roots, no soil! LOL! So I added more potting soil back in and watered them again really good. So ...

I am holding on to the rare hope that I haven't murdered my vines! I don't know how long it will take to see my vines suddenly start to die. But if Mother Nature and God above has any mercy on me, these vines will somehow survive what I just did to them!

I keep looking out the french doors at the ones on the table in pots expecting to see drooping vines and leaves. So far, not yet. Maybe later today? Maybe tomorrow? Maybe in a week? I don't know. All I know is that I was not paying attention to what I was doing, got side tracked, and when I resumed, I picked up the wrong dang gallon jug! HOW STUPID CAN ONE BE??? Pretty stupid apparently! The label is right on the Chlorox jug and I didn't even notice it!! Not good. Game over! ACKKKK!

(Sigh)

BTW - Screaming woman image came from Martiza Writes website: http://maritzawrites.com/blog/?p=123 She is a hoot! I need a good laugh right this minute. Think I will go over to her website and get a few chuckles ... and then go grocery shopping. (Oh joy! NOT!) I can NOT stand the fact that the MGs are out there staring back at me through the french doors asking me, "Mommy? Why did you do that to me? I just wanted a drink of water!" , as their little roots, stems and leaves give a huge sigh as they struggle to recover (if ever) ...

I hope I am not the only one to do something so STUPID. Anyone want to make me feel better and share your own blunder? I doubt anyone can top this! (Rolling my eyes in disgrace ...)

This message was edited Jun 28, 2009 1:02 PM

I bet all will be fine! Have faith.... have faith --you've got the cleanest MGs in town and maybe...just maybe...something wonderful will happen and in 20 years all of us and our offspring will be 'treating' the MGs with a dose of bleach once per season.. calling it the 'becky bleach blunder Rx'

Becky one would think if they can bleach flour they feed to humans all will be OK for the MGs...did I make ya feel better!?

Becky, I have a solution to prevent this from ever happening again to any of us. You know the theme song to the first Indiana Jones' movie? We found a card for Dad's day that blasted whoever opened the card with that music (got a great chuckle from dad over that one). Anyhoo, how about taping cards like that to the bottoms of jugs and jars of dangerous concoctions around the house, so that when you lift them up, you automatically get blasted with Indiana Jones' (or whoever) theme music???

just a thought...heehee

karen

Oh dear, don't stress, if they don't make it, they weren't meant to be. In the meantime, you've given us a chuckle. And haven't we all had those "oops" moments??? Oh yeah. Keep us posted.....

Love the screaming woman photo - just had to check in when I saw it.


Joanne

becky sorry to hear your day isnt going any better then mine. i just lost 250.00 i was going to pay a bill and just took the money and my small purse. was walking into the place and someone grabbed it and snatched it right out my hands. thankfully all i had was the bill money and nothing else of import in there. i left main wallet with credit cards and stuff and meds at home in main purse.

just didnt feel like carrying it so just took keys and money and bill and breath mints . bad thing is now i gotta figure out how to pay the bill so i can keep my cell phone on since hubby is out of town till next year. my only way to talk to him and cant afford to go see him on base as way to far.


just cryiong alot and hurting due to shoulder being pulled from this. and sleep i dont know if i will get any tonight or not. thankfully all he took was my purse.

sorry rambling. didnt mean too

Dorothy - LOL! I seriously doubt bleach will ever become a staple used in horticulture.

Ronnie - Eating bleached flour vs. drinking pure bleach. I don't know ... I would choose not to drink a glass full of bleach. Blah!

Karen - LOL! Great idea! LOL! Glad to hear your dad enjoyed the Indiana Jones card! Some of those musical cards are pretty funny!

Joanne - The photo I posted to this thread is exactly how I felt the moment I realized what I had done. Sheer horror! The kind where the hair stands up on your neck! And then I think I was in shock for a few minutes before I was able to compose myself. Thank goodness I had the hose nozzle in my hand. All I could think of was to wash or dilute the bleach out of the pots and ground. Thank goodness all the plants had a good established root system. I blasted them each with water for several minutes. Blasted out all the soil and hopefully any residue of bleach.

I don't know if my quick attempt to save these plants has worked. I checked on the plants all day long, I am especially watching the new growth at the tips of the vines figuring they will show signs of wilt/death if the bleach turns out to be fatal.

I checked one last time before it got dark. All the plants looked okay, like nothing had happened. I am hoping that I acted quick enough and flushed enough contaminated soil away from the roots and diluted any bleach off the plants with water. Time will tell ... hopefully each day will bring healthy plants. We shall see ...

Thanks for the laughs and words of encouragement about the stupid thing I did today! Take my blunder as a warning to stay focused when you are doing your daily routine of caring for your plants. I don't usually water my plants with rain water. But I just happpened to collect rain water recently and thought the plants would like that water better than well water. (sigh)

{{{Marie}}} So very sorry to hear that your purse and money was snatched. That is so awful !!! I hear that crime has increased due to the hard times of this recession! Scary! I hope your shoulder feels better tomorrow and you are able to sleep tonight.

Makes my whining about my plants seem less horrible;

i think i would cry over the mgs too. hubby says dont fret as not good for my blood pressure but right now i am still shakey and just dont know what i am gonna do.

Marie, I am so sorry to hear about the theft and your shoulder, too. I remember how that felt, when something like it happened to me. I bet things'll look better in the morning.

When I was growing up in a military family, snail mail was how we communicated. A couple of years ago, around 90 years of age, dad was cleaning out some old correspondence and found a letter he had saved from me when I was at the height of 12-year old silliness - he returned it after all these years - can't believe I ever wrote such twaddle. But, until you are able to aquire another cell phone, maybe old-fashioned letters between you and your dh might become keepsakes for the future.

Hoping that the morning will put a more positive light on things for you and that your shoulder will feel better than Becky's *New and Improved* morning glories -

karen

ps - I hope you keep us posted and let us know how things go tomorrow. I don't know about you, but for my family, the military life was very isolating.

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Becky, maybe your mgs will manifest some new, strange mutation after their Clorox bath? We can hope.

it is isolating thats why i am here alot. morning glories are my love. gardening is a passion.


just feel mad and sad and violated and everything into one. gonna see if phone company will work with me. will let you know how it goes.

I don't know if this will be useful, or not, but drug stores like CVR (spelling?) sell phone cards, and sometimes, if you can catch a sale, you can get them half-price. I use one with our land phone...don't know if it makes a difference what kind of contraption ya use for a phone with it.

That wouldn't affect the cost of the phone, but might save a bundle on long-distance calls.

Gardenwife has saved my tech-challenged bacon quite a few times, I'll bet she might have some useful ideas for you; and then, maybe the Computer forum might also have some ideas for how to aquire the most inexpensive cell phone possible...? The way things are going, it'll be hard to tell a cell from a computer one of these days.

Becky.. all I can say is.. Chin up, your flowers love you and they know you love them and they will be strong for you..
Marie, I am so sorry that happened to you, it is a horrible feeling to be so violated.

I think they will be find, the tuberous rooted should survive.

You could always try taking some cuttings just in case and feed with seaweed extract.

If anything the beneficial bacterial in the soil are all dead maybe dig some in next week

Good luck :P

Oh Becky, I couldn't help but laugh.... I am sooo glad I am not the only one that does "less intelligent" things because I'm either in a hurry, or so busy with my own thoughts.

I hope they will be okay. Keep us updated.

sorry for laughing Becky it must have been a terrible moment of realisation.... however i'm sure like Elsa says... we've all done things like that... i used to work in an aquatic centre and did something similar with fish... we used to sort fish etc. into buckets... but we also had a bucket with diluted bleach in, for keeping the nets clean... i scooped a whole tank of Cardinal Tetras and put them straight into the bleach bucket.... not good but most survived!

taking cuttings from your best vines is probably a good safeguard... as i did a quick google and it seems that chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) breaks down into sodium chloride(common salt) and sodium chlorate(once used as a weedkiller) in soil.... salt isn't good for soil/plants as it turns the soil acid but will leach out with watering over time... sodium chlorate can stay in soil for six months or so...it will leach out too, but will 'kill' the soil untill then... so your watering efforts certainly wasn't for nothing and has probably done the trick(depending on how much bleach was used of course) doesn't sound to good does it!.... sorry :-(

Becky,
It's the wrong thread, you must submit your photo ID in the Joseph's thread " present your self " three months ago ! LOL

posted twice



This message was edited Jun 30, 2009 6:39 AM

Marie - I hope things are much better today. Hang in there! Thank goodness he didn't get your personal information. Identity fraud is a nightmare to deal with!!

Elsa, Joanne, Colin, Dany - Go right ahead and have a good laugh! I certainly deserve it for being such an idiot!

Karen - "manifest some new, strange mutation after their Clorox bath" ... like pale or white leaves and blooms! LOL!

Colin - Yikes! Sorry to hear about the tetra fish! I can't believe any survived! That's amazing! Thanks for the information about the breakdown of sodium hypochlorite to salt. I do know that after a day, the chlorine evaporates and leaves the salt residue. I was down on my hands and knees smelling the soil around the plants in the ground. Couldn't smell any chlorine at all. I am hoping it didn't get totally absorbed by the soil.

We had an hour long downpour of rain about an hour or so ago. YAY! More water to dilute the bleach in the soil. So far, the plants look fine. I think my quick action to rectify what I had done may have saved them ... or at least I hope so! You can bet there is no germs in the soil now! LOL!

Thanks y'all for making me feel a lot better about what happened. What a nightmare! Argh!

Okay - just to make you feel better Becky, here's one of my blunders:
I water my indoor orchids with rain water or melted snow in the winter. I like to warm the water up a bit by adding a small amount of very hot, nearly scalding tap water. Occasionally, I've accidentally watered an orchid or two with the jug of pure hot tap water because it looks exactly like the jug with the rain water in it. Doh! No causualties so far. ;p

Joanne

Becky, I just read your post. Oh no! Well, it's done now. All you can do is wait and see. Must be OK though. Sounds like it and if we have any of your seeds, we will be glad to replace them for you. That's why when I plant the seeds, I always leave 1 or 2 left - just in case....

Becky have you tried to purge the plants???
You can put a cloth over the top of the plants to keep the soil in and sink it in water and let it drain, change the water often and you should be able to remove alot of the bleach. Keep doing it until you think you have made some headway, I don't think bleach in small amounts is toxic to plants but stright out of the jug just might be a little to much.

I would try the purging and hope for the best, sure won't hurt at this point. This is kinda the same thing we do when we get an acculimation of salts on the tops of potted plants and it works for that so It just might help your MG's .....

Sorry for the mistake..............love your screaming woman... gonna download that one just in case I need her myself....LOL

Hi Becky, was wondering how your plants are doing...

Yes Becky let us know how they are doing. This would be good information.

Geez, Becky! That's even worse than my boo-boo this summer. I cut down a clematis vine by mistake. At least it'll come back, but who knows about your MGs? How are they doing now??

Joanne - Glad to hear that your orchids survived the scalding! These accidents happen so quickly!

Nicole - Thanks for the kind offer to replace my vines with your generous offer of seeds. Very nice of you! I am okay as far as seeds go for now. It's just a bummer to spend the time and effort to grow them and then do something dumb like that to harm or kill them. :-(

Hi Judith! Glad to hear your clematis wasn't too badly fazed by the hard pruning. I just pruned mine a couple of weeks ago because I was told to do that to get a second flush of blooms. :-) Two of my vines are coming back strong. The other is in a wait and see holding stage. LOL! Don't know what it is thinking ...lol

The latest on my blunder. Looks like I am losing 2 young seedlings of Moonvine. My Pink Porcelain and the George Strait (or whatever the vine is) now seem to be dying in a hurry. My potted plants seem to be doing okay for now. Maybe flushing them really good did the trick. But flushing the ground is much harder to do because the soil and bleach just leeches out into the surrounding soil which still is right there near the vines. So I am collecting seeds as fast as I can hoping that the bleach accident doesn't affect the seed pods and seeds.

I have had rain almost every day now which also helps to flush and dilute the bleach. I will be amending those garden beds before starting new seeds. I plan to remove the top layer of soil in those garden beds next to the picket fence. It could only help all the way around. :-)

Thanks for your concern and great ideas to redeem myself and try to save my MG vines and other plants.

idea maybe if you put the roots of the ones that are dying in water and no dirt maybe it will help them. i have done that before on transplnted ones and they seem to do okay.

My sons; Blunder that now has me calling him Plant Killer when I see him... I had several big pots of plants I took over there including 2 fan palms... he called me yesterday to tell me he was bring them back to me.. now I know he he knows that and seed is a plant killer I have the two p

Marie - Thanks for your suggestion. I think being newly sprouted Moonflower seeds, the bleach was able to total them because they are so young. They died pretty quick! Not too much damage yet from what I am seeing of all the vines that were affected. Fingers crossed that it stays that way!

Debra - Did he use Weed Killer or something like that on them? Yikes!!!

He used weed and feed, he had no clue.. at least the things on the beach survived( he didn't "feed" them.. THANK GOODNESS, and the two fan palms are going to make it, they just lost their fans, but I cleaned out the root system in time..

Reminds me of the time when I was a new vegetable gardener back in the 70s. I used systemic insecticide. What did I know?? Fortunately I found out how deadly it could be BEFORE we ate anything. I had to pull out the whole garden. Live and learn!

Debra - Ack!!! That's worse than what I did! Glad to hear the Fan Palms are going to survive. What a disaster for the plants!

Judith - Oh my! That's downright scary! I wonder how many gardeners DO use pesticides on edible plants not realizing that it is poisonous to humans too. I bet there are a lot more gardeners doing that than we can imagine. There should be big, bold warnings right on the bottles of pesticides ... for people growing plants for food. That is one of the reasons I hate using pesticides of any kind.

Becky, the catapillar turnedinto a white moth very pretty.. we let it go so it can eat some more chinese bean hyacynths? LOL

Cool! :-) Cycle of life! :-)

I posted pictures on my thread, Becky.. sorry..
Thanks for giving me the information I needed.. I can't wait to find a pillar on my milkweed..

=:o( Poor Becky !..... actually Poor MGs !!

well you never know, you may come out with a brand new MG species after the bleach treatment and after that we all bleach our MGs... ! just a joke... I'm terribly sorry for the poor plants, well now it's sure that your garden is DESINFECTED !!!

Becky count on me for seeds dear, what ever you may need that I have, just let me know

I hope your MGs can make it

did they make it?

Koko - Thanks for the kind offer of seeds to replace the plants I may lose to the bleach incident.

Marie and all - So far, so good ... plants are still alive. In fact, the one that I thought I lost ... the small Moonflower seedling dropped all it's leaves and is now growing new leaves. So ...

If the bleach adds "salt" to the soil, that WILL be a problem later...

Here is a photo of Calystegia hederacea (Japanese False Bindweed) forming bloom buds. I am amazed that the bleach didn't do damage to this vine afterall! Whew!

This message was edited Jul 11, 2009 10:17 AM

im glad all are doing well. seems the bleaching didnt hurt them too bad but mostly your quick action of flushing it out is probably what saved most of them.

and i have heard of people soaking irises and stuff in bleach for fungus purposes so hopefully all stays well and doesnt turn.

that vine looks good to me!