Confessions of a gardener

[Mr Potato Head]

As winter approaches, we look back to analyse how we could have avoided the various gardening disasters. Not everyone is as green fingered as they'd like and recent research has shown that many British gardeners still have a lot
to learn.

The study, carried out by Wilkinson Sword, questioned more than 800 gardeners about their gardening mishaps over the years and found that mistakes varied from poor lawn maintenance to setting fire to the garden.

Respondents also admitted to falling down holes they had dug, and mowing over the lawnmower cable while cutting the grass. Several people recalled hitting a sewer pipe while installing a pond!

Luckily, less serious gardening offences are much more common; many people said they had laid patio slabs badly or planted inappropriately in the past, mostly due to a lack of care and plant knowledge.

Women admitted their most common mistake was planting something that died. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to incur the wrath of their partners by mistaking a precious plant for a weed.

What gardening disasters have you had? Has a partner pulled out your beloved beetroot?

[Chantal]

When digging in my front garden I accidentally cut through the cable for both my TV and my landline phone. Twice. I went back to BT and changed to Sky for the sake of my sanity.

My greenhouse door was left open (by a visiting child) in a cold January. The heating kicked in and stayed on full blast for a week! I had to sit down before I opened my bill but none of the plants died

The only other thing I've done was dug a massive trench to replace the water mains and then fell in it one dark night. I had a bruise on my inner thigh like a map of Indonesia and I won't tell you where East Timor was...

[sally wright]

Dear Mr PH,
I used to work for a local authority as a gardener in my youth and we were pricking out lobelia.
There was thousands to do and I was taking the boxes to the frames and writing out the labels. We started off with two varieties royal blue and blue basket. We ended up with three; RB, BB and royal basket and I felt like one when the foreman noticed!
Regards Sally Wright.

[Alison]

We had visitors coming, who wanted to see the garden. Quick out-with-the-fork, pull up weeds.
"Careful of the clematis on that arch" I said to my SO, who looked grumpy at being nagged about such a obvious thing.
Two minutes later, he had broken the whole thing off at the root. "I didn't realise where the root was." A beautiful viticella, the double one, full of buds and just coming into bloom. It was a very sad moment.
However, come mid-September, it had put up new growth, new buds, new flowers, and is still in flower as we speak!!
Alison.

[carlseawolf]

i bought a bag of compost and planted some lettuce seeds in a tray with the compost. waited a few weeks until the shoots came up and re-planted into 3" pots ,a few weeks later the real leaves came through and i had forty prized nettles ( i now leave seedlings longer before re-planting ).

[Chantal]

Many years ago I converted to gardening a friend who had never done more than mow a lawn in his life but did own an old greenhouse. I carefully showed him how to sow seeds and then plant them on etc etc. I went round some weeks later to see about 600 small plant pots all with the tinest little seedlng you can imagine. He'd bought a packet of lobelia and pricked out each seedling individually!

[Weed]

2005...I used my 12 x 8 greenhouse on the allotment for the first time and two of the trial plants were melons....
I had a hip replacement and couldn't get down the allotment for several weeks by which time the melons had taken over..I could just about step over the threshold an that was it

[Mike Vogel]

I just leave things and lose them. So far, starting in 2003, I have dropped 2 mobile phones [lovingly given to me by my wife so that she could ring to find out when I'd be home], and left for some grateful scavenger a cordless drill with battery, 2 screwdrivers and attachments and a hat. More seriously, though, I have really given up spwing lettuce on the allotment, especially after this last autumn, when nothing sown germinated and the seedlings planted out all got eaten.

mike

[Primrose]

A couple of years ago I was revamping a border, having yanked out a lot of unsatisfactory plants. As I had lots of self-sown foxglove seedlings about 2 or 3 inches high around, I dug them all out and transplanted them, anticipating a magnificent summer display.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that in virtually every case I'd transplanted a blue flowering weed which grows to about 18 inches high (whose name I can't remember) which has long tapering roots and which regenerates itself faster than rabbits breed. Its leaves at seedling stage are very similar to foxgloves. Two years later these damned plants still keep regenerating themselves in the border and I still don't know the name of them. Does anybody know which plant I'm referring to?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Primrose i know exactly the plant you mean, one of the large gardens i work at has it in nearly every herbaceous border.
I can't remember it's proper name, but i think it's related to the Comfrey family.

[alan refail]

Primrose

Was it Alkanet? A very pretty disaster.

[Granny]

Alkanet was my immediate thought. Very similar to foxglove seedlings but when bigger the leaves have little white spots on them. Can't get rid of it, especially when it's a mature plant. However, as it is indeed a relative of comfrey you can use the leaves instead of comfrey for a liquid feed. (I asked about it earlier this year).
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Granny

[Primrose]

Yes, Alkanet looks like the blighter. It's now spread to my front garden as well, probably via an unrotted root which must have accidentally been tossed into the compost heap instead of the dustbin. No matter how diligently I try and remove every vestige of it, it still keeps coming. In a wild situation the mass of blue flowers don't look unattractive, but in my garden .... grrgh ! Guess I'll just have to wreak revenge and use the leaves as a liquid feed. Can somebody please remind me regarding quantities of leaves preferably brewed in a bucket.

[Granny]

Hi Primrose, I'm happy to talk about getting rid of it. Maybe a PM would be more appropriate. Get in touch if you're interested.
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Granny

[GaGa]

My confession-
pottering in the greenhouse over a VERY wet weekend. Found myself busting for the loo. I couldn't be bothered walking all the way back to the house, taking my very muddy boots off, etc etc etc, so I just relieved myself into a handy watering can. (We still have bubble wrap inside the greenhouse, so no graphic images). I then walked to the compost bins, and rested the watering can on the lid of one of the 4 bins, while I took the lid off another. At this point the watering can fell off, and unloaded itself all over my jeans. Very pleasantly warm for a few seconds, then pretty horrific. Had to go back to the house to change after all, leaving the jeans in a bucket of water, saying I'd spilt pongy nettle tea on them!