Name your three worst garden mishaps/tragedies/accidents

[MeanQueenNadine]

OK just thought of another - spraying foliage fertilizer on my blue spruce - just 1/2 - one side just to see the "improvement" of the one side & burning all the needles off that one side - guess what side - the one facing the street, its finally starting to come back.....

 

[Tutter]

I'm going to be in therapy for years after reading these! Excuse me while I go and drink a gallon of chammomile tea to calm my shattered nerves.

 

[Beekissed]

#1. Allowing my teenager and 10 year old boy to plant corn unsupervised. To hurry it along they just tossed handfuls in the rows. I didn't find this out until the corn came up....picture 2 boys on hands and knees thinning groves of corn sprouts!

#2. Waiting for potatoes to come up....waiting....checking and waiting...... ...finding a pile of potatoes in the orchard where the pup had neatly placed them after digging them up!

#3. Nursing a potted lobelia all winter long on my office window sill, getting it to bloom all winter, and putting it out on the first warm day for a little sun. Enter free range chickens. Picture a little brown stump where my lobelia used to be!

 

[Grow 4 Food]

How about finding all 25 of my neighbors cows in my garden. 3 DAYS IN A ROW!!!!

The odd thing is that they still don't speak to us because I got mad about it. They left for 2 weeks on vacation in July and didn't put them in a pasture with water in it. So needless to say the cows took action to get a drink.

You can't imagine that damage 25 full grown cows can do to a garden that is already 3 months along.

 

[Dixiedoodle]

1. Not knowing anything about old rose var., but dug up one in the deep woods of our farm. It was beautiful, smelled delicious and since no one had lived in that area for over 150yrs and the rose was everywhere..we have no idea how old it was.. Placed in the yard and After it was settled, growing, I began 'doctoring' it.. I sprayed it w/ '3in1 spray' for roses, feed in rose food, watered it by drip.. built a fancy arbor---It DIED!!DEAD!! not one root lived and it looks so pretty..

2. Planting 25 squash and 25 zucc. plants after dh told me -I only needed two!!! IF two are good/enough, then 25 would be even better!!(that was 30yrs ago).

3. Telling dh I wanted to make grape jelly --too many times.. He and his uncle picked a bushel and a half of grapes for me to make jelly from...

 

[bayouchica]

I planted some marigolds around some of my bell peppers & asparagus beans... I'm not one to pull weeds on a regular basis.. One oh I'll got pull some weeds...yeah you guessed it..pulled up all the marigold sprouts
I started some tomatoes from seed,finally they were ready to go out.I'm so clumsy on my feet, tripped on my own feet & squashed 3 of my poor baby tomato plants before they went in the ground

 

[mistylady]

1. When we looked at this place to buy it I noticed the garden area with the high fence to keep the deer out and the handy water faucet! Perfect! After the papers were signed .... we got moved in after few months of fixing things .... and I got a day to work on my garden spot! The kids are in the house annoying daddy so I make a clean break for the outdoors! Grabbed a hoe and off to the garden spot. Go check out the cool red faucet. Lift the handle. Hmmmmmm ... nothing. Well try again. Still nothing. I went and told hubby that the water wasn't working. I could see the dumb female can't figure out a faucet look on his face. LOL He lifts the handle. Nothing. So he went and got a shovel and started digging. The faucet was stuck in the ground. Not hooked up but it looked good.

2. I started to dig where I wanted to put a flower bed by the front door. Rocks. I kept digging. More rocks. Great. I took the hose and washed the area down. Not rocks. Cement. Now I have plants in containers there. Still concrete. Arrgghhh!!!


3. I planted two mulberry trees for shade and fruit. Drunk neighbor on horse vs 24 inch tall mulberry tree. Horse won. But the tree has some leaves!

 

[Mossy Rock]

Nothing to serious, my wife dumped a lot of wod shavings and chicken manurer aroun dthe apple trees one year while they were blssoming, they all fell off and we had no apples.

 

[rebbetzin]

My three worse mishaps were....

1. A few years ago our water bill went from an average of $50.00 to $400.00 in the space of one month!! My husband hit the roof!! I said "We must have water leak." We have a house that was built in the early 1950's and there was a water leak a few years back... A whole other story!!

Anyhow, we turned off all the water, checked the meter, and it didn't move.... uh oh...
My husband said, "Heidi, I know where the water leak is... AT THE END OF YOUR HOSE!!! (I had actually used that much water!! ) What we didn't know was, the Water bill is on a "expodential" curve. The more water you use, the more expense it gets.

Being the ultimate in "Type A", and an Electronic/Computer Design Engineer, my husband stayed up one night into the wee hours of the morning to made me a spreadsheet for my water useage. .All I have to do is enter the reading from the water meter on the form, and record it on the spreadsheet program on my computer. And it will automatically tell me how much water I have used and how much water I have left in my "allotment" of water for the month.. We agreed $85.00 would be the max. amount I could spend on water for the summer months, with winter being $50.00 or less hopefully.


Here is my "speadsheet" that my husband was so kind to make for me...(He said he just didn't want any more surprise $400.00 water bills.)

Another funny thing my husband said during that whole $400.00 water bill ordeal was...

"Heidi, not even the Holy One Himself attempts to have a such a lush, green garden in the Sonoran Desert."


2. In December, I forgot to turn off the hose one day... it was on over 24 hours full blast!!
Another close to $200.00 water bill!!

3. A friend gave me a wonderful little Meyers Lemon Tree, she was moving to Oregon and didn't want to take it with her. It was in a pot, she had never put it in the ground at her house. I planted it in my backyard. It soon withered and died!! I tried planting another Lemon and a lime tree in the same area, after "fixing", or so I thought, the soil. They both died too!!



Now I have 7 ciitrus trees in a different area of the backyard... and so far they are living!! All of them I started from seed.

 

[OaklandCityFarmer]

Yeah I know how you feel! The water district here announced about a month ago we're going into "drought" pricing, which means we are capped at around 100 gallons a day and anything over that incurs a $2.00 fee per gallon! So, we're cutting back. Actually am working on building a grey water system. Have you guys ever thought about that?

That's a really cool spreadsheet! Could you be convinced into sending me a copy? (I use to work in corporate management, I love spreadsheets. It's sick, I know.)