The Trombone Zuchinni may turn out to be at the top of my list if it keeps growing but I have had many more so how about sharing your mistakes....
worst garden mistakes
Many years ago I planted some Jeruslem Artichokes it is not from Jeruslem and is not an Artichoke...The hype was this would replace potatos in your diet without the starch ..Igrew quite well and was a tasty veggy BUT it made everyone in the family so gassy that the children were rolling on the floor in fits of laughter ...needless to say we did not dig anymore of it ..the Gophers discovered it and spread it in to every square foot of our garden and the next spring we had the most godawful weed patch ever grown in that part of the world...Had to abandon our garden and start a new one ...
This past Spring I planted a bunch of fruit trees and they are too close. I need to replant every other tree. 7 in all. And the soil is black gumbo!!
Your zuchetta rampicante (loosely translated 'rampaging zucchini') will die come frost or sooner if you chop it off near the base. However, the one little apple mint I set out a few years ago has taken the large herb garden and a good bit of the back yard. It does not die, no matter how cold the winter is. The same is true of the showy evening primrose I transplanted from the wild. Such a pretty spring wildflower! Now I hate it. It spreads from underground runners as well as seeds.
Here in se oklahoma we have a basil that is purple and makes millions of seeds it will cross with any other basil that you plant and it's genes dominate so that all you get from sved seeds are more of the Purple monster i can relate to that apple mint takeover had a mint problem here until I discovered Round up
thanks for sharing the funny stories--makes me feel better about the many mistakes i made/am making and will continue to make
i never believe plants will get as big as i am told so i end up planting too close, i am always in a hurry so tend to plant things without a lot of thought for later--
but i guess my biggest mistake lately is that last year i took leaves and covered all of my gardens with them for mulch --this year and really last year too--tons of misquitos from all those wet, soggy leaves so this year i raked them up--oh and ants like living under those wet leaves too!
I have a friend that owns a chineese restaurant. One year she decided to get rid of her little white tea cups (you know the kind with no handles). I said give them to me and I will find a use for them in my yard. I turned them upside down and used them as a border for one very large bed that took up most of my back yard. They looked so cute, until I turned one up and found that each one had an ant colony living in it! It was a nightmare taking up each little cup and dealing with the ants beneath. Fortunately they were not fire ants.
C
oh how funny! and that was such a cute idea you came up with!!
I happily accepted a a common purple Maypop passion vine from someone at my first RU not knowing what a monster it is....It's runners have spread to every corner of my large yard and no amount of roundup, pulling runners up will kill the darned thing. I hate it!!!
Here we have some Native Passion flowers and I have never notice them being very aggresive ..I do have a sweet Autumn Clematis that takes over the porch each year and I see those SWC s growing out in the forest so pretty sure if I didn't cut it back to the ground each year it might get out of control
Not too sure if this is a mistake or just one of those "What was I thinking" moments anywho last spring I planted a full 30' row of sunflowers just right out of the sack of birdfood ,will get a picture of it tomorrowLOL
Ok that made up my mind, my two relatively new maypops are leaving the yard!
As promise here is the sunflowers of course the cardinals and goldfinches will take care of the seeds but what ever am I going to do with the stalks ,only solution I can think is the chipper but that is going to be a ton of prickly work...
grits i laughed at your gassy veggies! note to self------------jeruselum artichokes not a good choice before a job interview!
the sunflowers sure are pretty tho!
But were the gophers gassy?
I have one for this year actually. I planted Diablo watermelon this year. Very highly rated by the Texas A & M site. They said the vines needed room. Boy, they weren't kidding! They've taken over the rows, between the rows, and the next bed over! I have many watermelons coming on and hope they all get ripe and I have so many watermelons I have to give some away. That would be my one happy thought for all those vines! Next year I will do a double-wide bed for the watermelons and plant at least 12 feet apart (I planted 8 feet apart this year). Many need 20 feet! The first ripe melon should be ready soon. It had better be verrrry tasty!
At night I lay away and I can hear those vines murmuring to each other! The dogs start to bark and DH thinks it is deer or feral hogs. But I know better--it is the watermelon vines!
vines are like that--"murmering to each other"--------------you wake up and they poked up in a new area and just keep going and going and going______________
I think one of my worst mistakes was letting mexican evening primrose sneak into my garden. I am pulling it out everywhere now. Second worst mistake ( this mistake is ongoing) is planting the cute tiny plants I get mail order too close and then the grow up to be their real size!!
How could I have forgotten the Asian jasmine! It is in a 20' x 4' bed bounded by cement on all four sides. It comes out from behind the siding at the roof of the garage, grows into the garage through the window and doors, and has even come up in the greenhouse at least 15 feet away. It had to have grown underneath the cement slab the garage sits on to have done that. I can't kill it, and I can't dig it out. Its a matted mess with roots extending to China. It was a real struggle, but I did dig a little from one end of the bed with a small backhoe. Unfortunately, I can't get the backhoe any further into the bed without tearing up the cement walk with its "feet." Weed B Gone Plus does not phase it.
Oh yes asian jasmine...forgot about that one.
C
My good ness just learning so much about what not to do ,,I was raised in the swampland of Louisiana so everything was an invasive ,but at an early age moved to the arid west and stayed there until I retired moving to SE Oklahoma 10 years ago..so am learning about invasives ..The jeruslem Artichke fiasco took place in an irrigated garden so only had to let it go without water for 1 year and that ended that..A friend lst year bought a Asian Jasmine and was broken hearted when it died wait until I show him this..LOL
I would celebrate if I could kill my Asian jasmine without polluting the area it is growing in. A friend who is a landscaper said I should spray it with diesel. I am still thinking on that and need to do some research. The Asian jasmine is trying to impress me right now with lots of fragrant blooms, but I refuse to sniff!
it's kind of funny when you see those plants for sale and you think that everyone and their brother could come and take what they want from your yard right?
I always think, "If they only knew...." LOL
Well I have moved my hosta bed for the third time. Finally I have managed to find a place where it will get little if any sun. Maybe next year they may come out of their three year shock and begin to spread. I am constantly moving things around that I planted in one place not thinking when they will bloom or how tall they get or don't get.
The worst problem I had was planting elephant ears and horsetail rush in my koi pond. They almost wrecked my rock shelves and clogged my system before I waded in and cut them out. The roots were completely engulfing huge rocks and pushing them away from the liner of the pond. They have worn out their welcome in the pond. The horsetail also escaped from the pond and shot runners under my flagstone walkway into my flower beds. I had to trace them down and dig 8 " trenches to retrieve the roots.
Can you contain the elephant ears in a pot? I got 2 freebies from the last RU and they are spreading some. I also bought a brown leaved one that I want to put into the pond, is this a bad idea?
Cheryl
oh my--and i keep encouraging the elephant ears! i love them so--
they are planted in a raised garden next to my house and i know the roots go under my patio but i didn't think they were strong enough to do any harm--are they strong enough to hurt my foundation and patio? or are they more a nusance?
It is the horsetail rush that was bad in the garden. I don't mind the EEs in the garden, just wouldn't plant them in the pond. A EE in a pot, if you pulled it up and trimmed roots would be fine. In the garden you can dig or pull them up from damp soil pretty easy.
This isn't pretty but I want you to see what just a couple of plants roots look like when left to run in the pond. I had to cut a lot off to get these out.
wow!!
they sure liked your pond!
There's not enough room to list all of the invasives I have planted and encouraged!
and i even feel a little bad making them leave!
as though they would ever really leave--they like to pop up again
Watched a segment of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe and he was harvesting Poi in Hawaii (sic) and the poi roots lokked just EE and so did the plants and I see EEs growing wild when I go to Louisiana to visit the kinfolks
LOL poi is made from Taro and EE are Taros.
C
We learn something everyday!
Wonder if they would be easier to manage if they were in pots with no holes?
i do have some elephant ears in a container without holes--they have sent a shoot over the side and into the nearby dirt! i still haven't gotten to the point of finding the elephant ears invasive even tho they keep spreading--i love them so
sheila ;you mentioned moving plants constantly-not sure you meant that as a garden mistake or not but i have the opposite problem--if i plant something or it pops up somewhere i don't want to disturb it! so things grow in the "wrong" places, tall plants in front of short, sun loving plants in the shade, invasives where they can run amok, vines next to the air conditioner which they love to grow into, and the list goes on and on--silly isn't it??
I'm coming to regret planting frogfruit in my flower bed as a ground cover. It covers the ground alright, and the neighbor's yard, and creeps out into the driveway....
Yes the FF is very adaptable to where ever you put it. I have to weed whack it when it starts getting out of hand.
Oh, my goodness. I LIKE some of y'all's mistakes.
Except the horsetail rush, Sheila. :) I haven't gotten rid of it yet because my dh loves it, and the dragonflies love it, and I was able to take down all the funny-looking stakes I had put out for them. (The dragonflies, not the dh.) But this year I had to get out a Jim Bowie knife to cut it into pieces. Just kept a small piece, and I'm keeping a close eye on it now.
I made the mistake with the evening primrose too. It was growing in our yard when we bought the house, and I'd look out the kitchen window and see all those pretty flowers, so I just let it grow. 20 years later I'm still pulling up bag-fuls of it every spring.
Oh, and the ruellia. The tall kind that throws its seeds everywhere. I knew its nature, but I figured I could pull up seedlings. I didn't know it also puts out 20-foot runners underground.
Honeysuckle. I love the fragrance and the hummers loved it too. Thought I'd be okay cause it was in a confined area. Ooops... no, it wasn't. :)
At this point I'm starting to wonder if my crepe myrtles belong on this list. Suckers everywhere.
By the way, you guys know that the invasive EE's are the species, right? They are taking over lakes and waterways down in the Hill Country and are a real problem. I haven't had or heard of that problem with the hybrids, though.
Now this Okie needs some help first off what is Frog Foot??? Second question is Ruellia??? My nephew gave me some and I have it repotted into a large pot ..What to do next is the question ..It cannot spread is planted in a pot that sits on the end of a concrete driveway with no dirt near..Next ? is Texas Star is it very invasive ??the lady that gave it to me has moved hers several times as it at one point took over her DH's rose bed and he threatened it with some drastic measures and since he has a backhoe she assumed he would follow up on his tthreat..the Texas Star is currently occupying a large container so it is portable..the large planters are my way of being able to move mistakes around without a lot of digging ..