You are the only one. LOL We all make mistakes.

Plenty of mistakes made here. But I like reading these "dumb mistake" threads. (do a search) You learn a lot.

-Before I knew better I must have planted so many rootbound plants that eventually died.
-Another time I hired a lawn care service guy to put down weed and feed (or something) but didnt point out the edge of creeping phlox to avoid.
-Letting a friend trim a magnolia tree. He topped it off, the branches grew sort of laterally and then broke during an ice storm (taking out my cable and phone lines) The tree had outgrown its location anyway. Too big for my smallish yard. It's gone.

Well, 42 years ago I didn't know the difference between annuals and perennials! So no one can be more ignorant than that! LOL

My parents gave me a nice gardening book and I learned a lot. I'm still learning - gardening and plants are such a huge topic I don't think anyone can ever know it all.

Glad you plants didn't succumb! :)

I've heard some very good gardeners say that you can't call yourself a 'gardener' until you've killed every plant in your yard at least three times. That made me feel better about my mistakes.

One of them was putting some spoiled pigeon feed around a big beautiful Mrs. Dudley Cross rose as compost. When watered it got hot and killed the rose! Oh well ... live and learn is right. Won't do that again, but will probably do something else equally as stupid.

I am not called Calamity for nuthin'! lol! I ripped up a VERY noxious weed here, called Morning Glory...it was in one section of the yard...well, hubby took it to the composter that was a huge raised wooden thing 4x8foot, and put it all in there...well then I got the great idea that all that compost was good for the garden, so proceeded to make a nice new 3oft bed with all that compost as a starter...ya. Now I have a 30 ft bed of morning glory. ARG!
I also got the great idea of putting newsprint down them mulch to keep the weeds away(This is all over the yard idea) So I weeded, then while I was putting newspaper down, I got the idea that I would put like 5 or 6 sheets thick to REALLY keep those weeds away!!! then 4 inches of composted mulch! Well my garden barely survived cuz I didn't water enough to rot the paper!!!
Those are about the two worst things so far....

Ha! Funny you should ask, I did some very dumb things today. So I was doing some planting of new plants and some transplanting of old plants. Now if a transplant is going to be at all tricky, I google it and read up on all the details. But today I was transplanting a musk mallow that I have had for a long time, and it has never gotten particularly big, and I thought maybe it would do better in a better spot, and I just assumed it would be an easy transplant. For some reason I thought its small size would mean that it wouldn't have extensive roots, but my goodness if that thing did not have to deepest roots of any plant I have ever tried to move. There was no was to dig it out well without damaging other plants, so I just ended up doing my worst plant transplant EVER. To make matters worse, it is the hottest day of the year so far, why on earth did I think I should do transplanting today, when tomorrow is supposed to be overcast and rainy? I think I will probably lose the plant.

And then my second VERY dumb move of the day (seriously, what was wrong with me today? I blame my five year old daughter waking me up at 5:00 am and not being able to fall back asleep, so I am very sleep deprived), was I was planting an aster, and also doing some maintenance work on my existing asters. So I pinched back all the old asters, and then also pinched back the new aster without thinking. It is looking VERY stressed out now. It may die too. Sigh. Mostly I seemed blessed with some very tenacious plants, and they seem to almost always survive my dumb mistakes.

Dumbest things I have done include putting manure in the hole of a newly planted rose and using round-up too close to a lilac and roses (didn't get on the leaves, but still affected them).

Well I have fried a few ferns on a westerly slope that is mostly shady throughout the day but then gets late after noon sun. It is always shady there during the day while I do a lot of gardening. It has been an interesting planting experience. :). I finally put in some iris and a peony. They are doing well although I think the peony will lean toward the sun.

So, trovesoftrillium, how do you keep your mulch in place? Gardening on a ceiling like that.

tj

Mulch gnomes. :)

LOL, you must be my twin! The dumbest thing I ever did was when I decided to fertilize the front yard myself. I went into town and borrowed one of spreaders, the kind you pour the fertilizer in and push around the yard while it spreads it on the grass.

I was so excited and looking forward to a lush lawn!

But after I walked ten feet I noticed all the fertilizer was gone. I didn't know I was supposed to adust the opening. :)

So much for that!