My worst ever vegetable growing mistakes

[Primrose]

In the hope of encouraging some of the newly joined members on here, I thought it might be encouraging and amusing if some of us could admit to some of the sillier mistakes we've made in our early vegetable growing lives..

I will kick off with :

Rushing out to sow my entire brand new veg parch with seeds on the first sunny day in January only to have the entire lot wiped out with prolonged snow and frost immediately afterwards.

Persistently sowing tomato seeds destined for outdoors in February and producing plants that were so leggy they were useless. It took me a long time to realise you can't beat the timing of nature and to develop some patience and delay sowing until much later. .

Sowing a dozen courgette seeds when there are only two of us to feed and planting them all out the first time I grew them, not realising I would be growing a European courgette mountain!

Not understanding why noxious persistent weeds with bulbils like oxalysis should not be put on the compost heap because they can often regenerate and spread all over your growing areas when the compost is spread out. Years later I'm still trying to eliminate the darned stuff!

[oldherbaceous]

I think my biggest mistake must have been the first year a got my allotment. the ground was on the heavy side, and i added huge amounts of only half rotted cow manure. Not only did the soil take even more working for that year, it also went very sour and things really did struggle to grow.

[Westi]

Great Topic Primrose!

I merrily weeded out all many veg seedlings as I didn't know what they looked like when small - but grew some wonderful weeds! Eventually I twigged and asked for advice but did feel a bit of a pumpkin!

Westi

[The Mouse]

Not labelling my pots. I thought that I would remember which pots were courgettes, which were cucumbers and which were butternut squash. Needless to say, I didn't! The same goes for the different brassicas - I learned the hard way that it's impossible (well, for me anyway) to tell sprouts, caulies, cabbages and broccolis apart at the pricking-out stage.
I can't claim to have been a beginner when I made the first of these mistakes, as I did it this year!

I nearly made a very silly mistake today, too: I didn't read the label properly and nearly sprayed my broccolis with weedkiller instead of pesticide

[Pa Snip]

I nearly made a very silly mistake today, too: I didn't read the label properly and nearly sprayed my broccolis with weedkiller instead of pesticide

Whoooops !!

[Diane]

Dropping all my tomato labels, just after I'd put the plants in the ground in the greenhouse, and now I don't know which are cordons and which are bush. This year I've decided to let them all do their own thing, and not pinch any sideshoots out and just see what happens. There are little baby tomatoes on all the plants anyway - so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

[Pawty]

In my first year of allotmenting I was way too keen and put all of my bean and courgette plants out in early April. Just as I finishing, standing looking proudly at my plot one of the older guys came up to me and shook his head saying 'you don't want to be doing that'. I stood there in my pink wellies, with my pink bucket and matching accessories not understanding why. A week later I understood, while shivering in the frost. 6 years on, I still have pink wellies, but always keep an eye on what the experienced allotment folk are doing and still ask them lots of questions.

[Pa Snip]

6 years on, I still have pink wellies, but always keep an eye on what the experienced allotment folk are doing and still ask them lots of questions.

Oh My, those wellies have lasted well

Good advice in your post Pawty on two counts,
1) Never be afraid to ask someone for advice
2) Always buy quality wellies

edited addition
3 counts actually
the third being, Don't be too hasty to try and beat nature.

[Johnboy]

A commercial ricket!
I spent an entire day and half the night sowing 10,000 lettuce seeds so that I could have the next day off.
This was in mid February and the plants destined for the retail market and mail order plants.
Who would have thought that the temperature in a poly tunnel in mid February would or could be 120F.
The net result was that the seeds locked up and failed to germinate and I slung them all outside and painfully re sowed.
Those thrown aside actually germinated in mid October. Who wants Lettuce plants in October.
In order to recover my pride I grew them on and when they were about 3" high we had lettuce with everything for weeks.
JB.

[Elaine]

We had a labelling problem too! I have always meticulously put labels in everything, as I know I won't remember which is what. Ken, on the other hand, thought he would remember. He didn't. We used to have interesting rows of mixed brassicas those first couple of years we had the allotment...
If he did put a label in, it might have been the seed packet on a stick, which of course either blew away or rotted.
Despite my having plenty of labels of all shapes and sizes, I might add.
He has changed his tune now though, as his memory...like mine..isn't as sharp as it once was.

My silliest mistake was sowing a full packet of runner beans and I ended up with 25 plants...I gave the rest of the plants away fortunately. As it was, I supplied half my neighbourhood with runner beans that year. The same with courgettes. Glad I'm not the only one! another mistake was not removing sideshoots from the tomatoes in the greenhouse regularly enough. Talk about a jungle?

The worst one was buying cucumber plants instead of sowing seeds myself. I ended up with a greenhouse infested with Red Spider Mites abseiling from everywhere and lost all the plants, as I didn't recognise what the problem was until it was far too late. I did the same again the following year with the same result until the penny dropped. I had never had Red Spider Mites until I bought in cucumber plants. I haven't had them again either, since I returned to growing my own from seed.
It might be a coincidence but I don't think so.