About 10 yrs ago, I invited my daughter to buy some veggie seeds for our garden. I didn't look at the packages very closely, just let her do her thing. Months later, we had the most beautiful watermelon growing but it was so small and round. About a month after it stopped getting bigger, I couldn't stand the curiosity anymore, picked it and cut it open. I was so disappointed to see that it "wasn't ripe yet" and was puzzled that the inside would be a peachy-orange instead of white-turning-pink, and no seeds were starting to form yet. I threw it on the compost pile and daughter and I vowed to "do better" the next year.

When spring came, we were shopping for seeds again and she said, "Hey look - they have the same watermelon seeds." How dumb did I feel looking at the package of seeds. The vines are SUPPOSED to make little round seedless melons with orangish/yellow fruit inside. I'd probably thrown away the best melon to ever come from our garden. Doh!

Another time I bought an evergreen tree and planted it so that when it grew up, it would block the view from my back door straight into the neighbor's back door. It was at the farthest part of my yard from the house and I couldn't even see it unless I walked toward it into the yard. A year went by and I noticed the tree hadn't grown at all. Luckily I had planted it with the tag which which I could still read. Upon more careful reading, I realized the tree was supposed to be 12-15" NOT 12-15'. It was an already fully grown dwarf specimen.

I thought of another. About 17 years ago, this really cool plant came up in the backyard of a townhouse I was renting. I watered it when it wilted a couple times, and staked up part that started leaning. My neighbors and I were in awe of the beautiful berries. Then I realized it was pokeweed! There was no room to dig where it was, so that's how I learned that boiling water will kill it.

I started this thread hoping to get more action on this forum, and I've started several discussions on other forums of a similar subject but it seems people are very reluctant to admit mistakes. These discussions are usually contributed to very sparsely.

I spent the first spring after we moved into our house trying to yank out these "weedy trees" that were all over our front yard. No success and since I did not want to use a weedicide, I put it on my todo list and moved on.

A year later, same story.

Finally after a couple of years of getting extremely frustrated as I was unable to pull out a single weed tree, one spring they all bloomed and I finally figured out they were - Redbuds!

I now have 14 redbuds the last I counted and they have been blooming every spring for the past 10-11 years and I love every single one of them. Thank goodness I was unable to yank out a single one.

Hope you get a chuckle out of this one.

Usha

Here's the dumb thing I did this year. I scattered a bunch of Zinnia seeds in one area, then completely forgot about doing that. That weekend, I asked honey to dump the lawnmower bag in that same spot. Then I started moving the clippings around, and even threw a couple scoops into some potting soil I was mixing. Fast-forward a couple more weeks... there were Zinnias sprouting in some of my recently repotted house plants. I left one of them alone, so now I have a pot with a little jade plant about 6" tall, and a Zinnia that's about 3 ft. tall. Both plants are doing well, but it's pretty funny-looking!

Here's my latest bonehead move - planting Cannas in a bed with nothing restricting them from invading other plants, like a Gardenia and jasmine shrub. In the process of making a new bed just for them, in the middle of mowed grass, by smothering a patch of grass. Doh!