Garden Talk: Your Garden Mistakes

jkom51, add calendula to the reseeds forever catagory in CA. I only planted it once.I pull the things up daily. They seem to have no season here and they attract every known garden pest it seems. It is a free for all. Oxalis is truely the bane of our exsistance. If you get rid of it the birds bring it back. I suppse we should be grateful it is such a nice shade of green.

When you guys talk of oxalis, are you refering to the regular garden clover or the pretty fancy ones such as the purple with pink flowers? I would hate to think it is ALL invasive. *eyeroll*

NoH2O - I'd love to take some off your hands if you want. Email me?

Just the little garden clover with yellow flowers. I think it's pretty -- good thing, huh? Right now, I see poison ivy all around my flower beds, some pretty well established. This year's big garden mistake is our not being proactive and getting out there early in the year. Now we're reaping the "rewards" of sloth!

Oh okay, good. :) Well, I guess not for those of you overrun with it. But atleast I can still buy the pretty stuff.

Lets see....

Amaranthus(love lies bleeding) the only thing bleeding was my hand from pulling up so many plants.....for years and years...and years......

Tomatillo.....planted 3 plants I started from seed.....its been 6 years and they are STILL coming up

Cattails......I was so worried about putting them in the bottom of the pond for the winter that I dug a hole in the garden and put them in there ,pot and all.....they have now taken over a 10x10 foot area of my garden.I tried digging them out...MASSIVE root system

Feverfew.....I think I finally have them under control....

Obedient plant is NOT!

Don't mulch with rotted hay

don't put Jerusalem Artichokes in the veggie garden

and if you ever see colts foot in your garden......

sell your house......

I've spent about an hour reading this thread--it's both hilarious and HUGELY informative. We just bought a house last fall, and I can see that I was headed for a few mistakes that I can now avoid!

I've had a few "duh" moments already, though. I made a spray to get rid of the aphids on my potted pepper plants--it didn't kill the aphids, but the sunflowers in the pot right behind the peppers turned black and shriveled up in less than an hour! And I've learned that gardening gloves aren't just to keep your hands clean--I cut open my finger on some nasty broken glass in the garden (there's broken glass all through the soil--very frustrating!)

Colts foot? Uh-oh: I've found a patch of it growing in the gravel at the end of the driveway--how bad is it? What can I do about it?

MOVE AWAY!


LOL

lol! You know it's a good thread when it recirculates for 2 1/2 years! Thanks Dicentra. :)

How exactly do you start preparing garden for next season? I've posted in general discussion but don't really know which forum to post. I was glad to this hoping I will get some advice. Thanks, Denise

I'd put a post in Garden Talk. It's kind of a general gardening forum where many of the not-so-easy-to-pidgeonhole posts go.

I guess I could write for hours about my mistakes.... I've been at it for nearly 30 years and still make them!
1. I planted the mint with my cabbage (per Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine this would repel cabbage loopers; it didn't). We tilled the next spring, and I had an ever increasing patch of mint for years until I covered it with a double layer of black plastic, weighted down with bricks. This was a very attractive addition to our property. After 2 years the plastic was deteriorating so I removed it. Some of the mint was still alive! With persistent pulling and digging, I finally ridded myself of it (almost 20 years after the initial mistake).
2. One of the worst mistakes I made was not knowing anything about garden planning when I laid out my flower beds. Many plants such as daffodils and daylilies have blooms that face south or west and my viewing areas are on the north! The blooms are not nearly as lovely when viewed from behind....
3. Planting too much. Can't overemphasize that. WAY TOO MUCH to take care of when you have about 4 acres of land. I advise new gardeners to plan carefully, incorporating lots of hardscape (paths, benches,etc) instead of all plants and no place to sit and enjoy them. A few healthy and well maintained plants look better than an acre of dry, diseased, insect infested plants.
These are just a few of many mistakes I've made. Hope some newbies out there can avoid the same.

Oh....Mint! *sigh* Yes, I have a lot of it, incorruptible and choking out my daisies and other flowers in one bed. Dangnabit.

Wow, thanks for all the additions to this thread. I guess I'll dig up the coreopsis first. I've been fighting the creeping charlie since I bought the place last year, finally broke down and used weed b gon, and now realize that there is no grass on the back half of the yard - it was ALL creeping charlie. Guess I get to seed in the spring. Thanks also for the part about having paths and benches rather than all flowers. Violas are another bad one. Pretty little blooms so I thought I would leave the couple of plants I found, now it looks like deliberate ground cover. Guess I'll mark this thread to watch in the future.

So Weed B Gon selectively kills broadleaf weeds and leaves the grass? Wow. We've got tons of creeping Charlie.

We finally had someone dig up the grafted willow we had in the bed in front of our front porch. It was huge and could only be kept controlled by frequent trimming, something which was difficult for us to do given its location and the plantings around it. No more! A friend has it in his yard now, where it has room to range.

OK I can't stand it. What is it you all are calling creeping charlie? I suspect that it is not my Creeping Charlie.

Gosh Frogs - yours looks like a succulent, deep green and shiney. The stuff out back looks similar, but is very thin and pale green. Sends runners out every which way - I got one vine out of the hostas that was almost 4' long. Had to break them each apart to get it all out. And it has a funny, almost pleasant odor. Nasty stuff!!

Well, Well, it took me over an hour to read all of these posts, but I have had the best laughs that I've had in a long time, probably because so much of it was brought back my own fiasco's.
I have not seen chinese lanterns mentioned so I will add those to the collection of items that can get out of control in a hurry. I thought that they were so cool that one of the first things I ever planted was a whole package of seed. I was thrilled to death when so many of them germinated and by the next year was pulling them out of everything and everywhere. They were not as difficult to get rid of as some of the things mentioned above but for that summer it seemed like I was finding them everywhere.
I have certainly enjoyed this post and I am really glad that it got brought back to the top of the forum.
Thanks all
Alice

I am new to Dave's Garden and just spent a wonderful hour reading all the posts on this thread. What fun!! I have done many of these things myself, but I appreciate being spared a number of future errors...I will pluck the Calendula today (don't love this plant, so I'm ok), hold off on planting the Vinca seeds next spring and will put my new choclate mint in a pot. Looking forward to a lot of happy time spent on this website!

I tracked it down. My creeping charlie is indeed a different animal (read plant) from the one that is infesting your yards. Whew! I did not want my beautiful charlie to be a bad guy. Mind you , it is confined to a pot and will never touch the ground.

Oh and let me not forget the very small fern that grandpa bought DD. It was an australian tree fern that grew into a 8 foot monster in a year with the root system from , well you get the picture. I have found this beast a new home. Hurray

At the university I used to work for, we had some Japanese visitors. To introduce them to southern culture, we gave them a package of grits. After they returned to Japan, we got a letter from them saying "we planted the grits and are looking forward to them coming up in the spring"

ROTF! Makes me think of this:

creeping buttercup (rananculus)not the bulbs, but the one with strawberry like creepers. I planted one plant and as each runner grew, I transplanted it to cover more flowerbed - a light growndcover, right? lol! It covered a 20 x 4' bed in one summer! I spent the next summer digging it up and still find it growing there!

PukeGreen: Mint need lots of water, it will even grow in the pond, bareroot in the water.

Vic1711: Eat the violets. They make great salad greens. They’re mild tasting and have lots of vitamins and minerals - more vitamin A than spinach!

jkom51 – a wood mill will pay you a surprising sum for your walnut tree, especially if it’s straight. The wood is worth a lot.


This message was edited Dec 17, 2003 9:12 AM

This message was edited Jan 30, 2004 8:58 PM

*BUMP*

I figured we could all use a belly laugh. :)

I'm brand new to this site but already I can see this is going to be a good one.

Unfortunately, I gleefully planted three pots of tickseed coreopsis not very long ago...now i'm trying to talk myself into pulling it out. I can't decide if it can do that much damage where I put it.....but I didn't think the mint I put in my first flower bed was going to be a problem either...guess you all know the end of that story. I still have some mint growing on the fringes of the bed but I've made my peace with it and just keep dilligent about pulling out any that strays into the interior of the bed. Of course, that was just preparing me for what I put in the place of the mint when I got it out of that bed...artemesia wormwood. Not sure about the name, but that's probably close enough. It was a lovely dusty grey and grew very fast, and fell over on everything else and smothered everything smaller than it (too bad the mint wasn't still there). I worked very hard to remove the artemesia.....only to forget about that experience and found this lovely little dusty grey plant the very next year and planted it. Oh yeah....it was the very plant I had just pulled out the year before. Oh well, I still pull a little of it out from time to time, but it's mostly gone. Then I put some lovely little Lily of the Valley plants in this very same bed....oh gee, if I could have just had the mint back !!! This was a major mistake involving having to completely dig up the bed and replant. Oh yeah, I had some gladiolas in that same bed and tried to get rid of them along with the Lily of the Valley, but I haven't won that battle yet.

Msbobolink - welcome! Oh, I feel your pain regarding mint. That's got to be my biggest woe. I have spearmint, peppermint and calamint. *sigh* Need to get out there and yank more of it tomorrow!

this is going to crack many of you up - My better half (bless her heart & good intentions) is always buying plants that never get planted. She intends to plant them but it does not happen. I will notice a new plant on the front porch approxamitely every two weeks. The plant will eventually die. At this point I will normally render same to the compost pile minus container ( anyone need containers ?). This spring I noticed a very large and very dead appearing plant on the porch and in the few moments I had added the contents of the basket that it contained it to the compost pile, then proceeded to work not to think of it again.
Turns out the the plant in question was Bamboo and not dead. - can't get to the pile anymore- need to buy a bigger chainsaw and start over - Dyson

OH NO!!! Oh, how funny! But not! Maybe the solution would be for you to plant them for her and then you would know what was in those containers. (I'm just thinking of what I wish my husband would do for me.) LOL Although, my stuff usually gets planted sooner or later. Of course, watering it while it's in the container helps. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of things die in the container too, we all have. Good luck with the bamboo. Anybody want some bamboo? ROFLOL
Sherri

What IS it about us that we will pay good money for a plant (or haul it home from a friend's house) and then will watch that poor thing wither up and DIE??? I've done it numerous times myself, but this year I *DID* make myself plant stuff promptly. (Okay, I didn't carry this mandate out perfectly: I have a grouping of 10-12 plants hanging around, still needing planted. But they're all still alive and going in the ground or the GH within the next few days ;o) Far fewer plants went to the compost heap, I'm happy to say.

(Thank goodness I don't have bamboo in my compost heap, though - whew!)

I think i will just start a new pile - oft it is better to retire the battle than lose the war. - Dyson

I don't blame you, Dyson. I believe I would too.

Hi, everyone! I'm excited this thread is resurrected! It's a great way to learn from others!!!

One of my biggest gardening mistakes was within my first gardening year (I'm still pretty new). My husband and I were so thrilled when we bought our first home and promptly began improving the soil in the front of the house. I planted lovely perennials that fall :) In the spring, I could NOT figure out why my perennials were taking so LONG to emerge. Finally I decided to start digging around for signs of some kind of growth. I found my answer. The weed control fabric we had laid around the new perennials the previous fall was literally smothering my plants!!! We had cut "x" marks in the fabric before planting -- just like the directions said, but somehow the plants were not coming up through the x's but instead straining under the fabric trying to find light!!! AHHHH! MY POOOOR BABIES! LOL. So, we took off all of the mulch, carefully took up the fabric and babied those plants like crazy, cutting many of them back to the ground to start again. Thankfully, they were saved. We save weed fabric for shrub borders now :)

Okay, I'm going to hold my breath here and tell you that I have grown creeping mint for a very long time right in the ground. It does travel some but it's easy to pull out. It will also jump paths. Sometimes the dogs come in and they smell really wonderful. It's lovely to walk through and it is a great moss substitute.

The worst I've had to do this year is fight the Callas. When we had our yard tilled and put in sprinklers the Callas thought they had gone to heaven. They came up everywhere! They have to be dug out for several years before they will go away, but they are bunchers, not runners. On the other hand, it appears that in this zone any small piece of a bulb will emerge whole. I have been trying to give them away to friends who think that they can't grow anything.

And thanks for the tip about nitrogen and Iris. I put a lot in this year. I'll have to do my homework!

ALLRIGHT I got a friend who runs a small local nusery interested in the Bamboo (I do their computer work also ). I really think this will all work out :) (I hope (fingers crossed)).

Ok I did not mean to kill this thread .. but since no one has posted since my last outburst, someone give me some help here reviveing it .... come'on we have all done things that did not turn out as expected or were just a bad "learning experiance" thoughtless at the time w/bad results. we need to "fess up" so others don't do the same (I need you to fess-up so I don't do that). - Dyson

Here are pictures of my "Bamboo Nightmare"

Bamboo sure is pretty -- good thing, huh? ;)

It is good that it is pretty but I am going to have to try and contain it. It is spreading very quickly, does anyone know if frost/freeze has any effect on it? - it is about the only thing around the yard that is still green.

Hello! I am a newby to this forum so still learning. Does "babying" those pretty pseudo bamboo things qualify? we purchased property this fall and in all my gardens are these pseudo baboo plants. A "graden expert" told me they have pretty white flowers in the summer so there I was making sure it was watered and fertilized - Holy Mother Nature - it is now EVERYWHERE! the runner are deep underground and I now have stalks that are tough and impossible to rip out!!! Help me please - does ANYONE know how to kill these things??????? I carefullly moved all my perennials from my other house and if they are killed, I'll just cry and cry... TIA! Mindy

Mindy, I am soo glad mine are in the bottom way back of the house - old compost heap, as for eradication, do you own a bulldozer?

Hi Mindy and welcome to Dave's Garden! Getting rid of invasives is never easy. Guess that's why they are called invasive. Here is a link to a method I have used, not on bamboo but on some other invasives. Hope it helps.


http://www.jackeden.com/cgi-bin/sheets/viewdata.cgi?id=1088539990