Growing blunders

Accidents happen, that's why its called an accident.  However, every now and then you hear stories of accidents that occur in the garden that leave you dumbfounded.  A simple mistake maybe, that leads into a big whoops.  Here are just a few that I've came across.

1. A guy came in one day, looking to buy the biggest white pines that he could.  He wanted to surprise his wife who was away visiting her family, with a garden makeover.  What a nice guy!  However, he didn't realize that existing hedge of white pines that he just cut down, was hiding the neighbors hot tub and collection of old washing machines left outside.  There are some benefits to living in neighborhood with an Home Owners Association, otherwise plant a dense hedge and don't cut it down! Needless to say, I don't think the husband will be doing anymore surprise landscaping again.

There's just some things you don't need to see

2. As unbelievable as this story might be, here's another semi-frequent problem we come across.  A tree service is employed to remove an overgrown tree from a town house garden.  The crew shows up, accesses the garden from the back gate and safely removes the tree while the homeowners are out.  In the evening, the unsuspecting homeowners return and realize that their tree has mysteriously vanished.  Stolen, abducted or just sprouted legs and walked away?  This is where it becomes apparent that the tree crew had entered the wrong back yard and removed a perfectly good tree, and in the story I heard, a prized 20-year-old apple tree.  Food for thought, put house numbers on your back gate to avoid accidents like this happening to you! ( Or, hire a company that know their trees ).

Not as easy to return and go

3. My last story of woe comes from a good friend who came in with an unusual mass plant death problem.    Though the problem may never be completely solved, the smoking gun might have been a mix up of weed-killing products with repellents, or chemical residue left in a tank sprayer.  The good intention of spraying deer repellent might of got mixed or contaminated with a weedkiller, leading to this horticultural catastrophe.  Alas, this is too common of a problem!  I've had customers call after spraying their yards with round-up thinking it was a selective weedkiller for lawns, only to find that there grass had died.  One guy sprayed his entire 40,000 square foot lawn, resulting in brown crispy lawn in as little as 5 days!  A painful lesson but one that we soon learn from. Click here to read more; Man-destroys-40-000-square-foot-lawn-mistakenly-buying-weed-AND-grass-killer.html

Hard to tell the difference when side by side!

I have to admit that I fell foul in my early days as a gardener, after being handed a plain bottle of brown liquid.  I was instructed to spray a lawn and mix this funky smelling liquid to a 1:20 ratio.  Having not been trained, I proceeded to mix it, 1 part water to 20 parts goop.  Needless to say, we had the irrigation going for a full 2 days trying to leach out the unknown toxic cocktail before plants began to die, and in this case, we won.  Just as well, because right in the middle of the lawn was a ceremonial tree that the late Queen Mother had planted herself.  I still don't know if killing the tree would of lead to treason charges being pressed, but I got very lucky.

Gardening is an ongoing experiment where we learn from our mistakes.  No gardening book will tell you to watch out for these simple and common blunders, so I hope what I have shared may help prevent you from become a victim of whoopsies.  Still, every now and then we're going to get hit by the idiot stick for which we have to eat a little crow and move on!