Biggest gardening mistakes

November 2024 we again asked our Facebook community to share their biggest gardening mistakes to help each other learn and have a laugh!

Here's ten of the best from the past couple of years.

2024

At my first house. I decided to weed a huge bed that seemed full of lots of weeds and found some small bulbs. I carefully replanted every single one of those oxalis bulbs! - Ceri

Don't plant new fruit trees when you have a puppy who thinks everything is a stick for them to chew. Pumpkin vines are also good tug of war toys. We are hoping for greater things this year. - Bernadette

Started 5 different pumpkins 6 seeds each they all survived... - Dena

My father-in-law once sprayed his whole lawn which he meticulous about with weed killer instead of fertilizer stuff, killed whole lawn! - Michelle

One year I thought it'd be a good idea to scatter a lettuce that had gone to seed over my veggie bed... shook it over the area I wanted, "nice, now I'll have plenty!" I thought to myself, job well done. About two months, 8,000 lettuce seedlings, three days of digging, and dozens of families acquiring hundreds - if not thousands - of plants later, I finally had a veggie patch again... - Erin

Digging up what I thought were daffodils growing under the trees at my parents' farm and replanting them at my own... Nope, they were onion weed. - Cathy

I was convinced I'd sown onion seeds in one of my beds. I had a closer look this week and it's turns out I've been carefully tending to GRASS for the last few months! - Beth

Shut the gate to your veggie garden so the sheep don’t eat your entire seasons worth of food! - Shinae

Letting the toddlers loose with seed packets no idea what's where but we have 4 carrots. - Liz

Planted raspberry cane's directly into the ground... Holy moly raspberry plants everywhere. Hayley

2023

Planting lettuce seeds on a windy day. Iceberg lettuces popped up over lawn, puzzling the other half! - Amanda

I didn’t actually plant it, but carefully nurtured a fascinating little plant for ages. Turned out to be gorse. - Colleen

Over pruning my apricot trees. Couldn't work out why the crop was so poor until I backed off with the pruners and had a large crop this year. Also not letting things go to seed. I now have all sorts of crops such as celery without having to buy any new plants. - Wendy

Don't forget to take your frost cloth off before the winds come or your neighbours will end up with a weird looking ghost in their tree. - Kat

Had never grown aubergines. Thought they might be, plant-wise, like corn. So got a few plants. Harvest was insane. Dozens and dozens of aubergines. The neighbourhood was fed, my extended family was fed, work colleagues fed, and the plants produced for a good couple of months. My husband has been put off them! - Isabel

Asking my very young niece and nephew to pick parsley leaves. They came into the house with the whole plant in their hands. - Sue

Planted two kamokamo, two pumpkin, two squash and three zucchini seedlings in my small backyard under my washing line. My yard ended up covered in greenery from these beautiful veges so had to tread carefully through it all to hang my washing. - Joleisha

Waited a long time for tomatoes to ripen and then found they were a yellow variety! - Ann

Planting parsnip seed and nurturing them carefully to discover I’d been nurturing inkweed plants - nice straight row too! - Janet

Years ago, as a young newly married gardener, I planted capsicum seeds in my garden in Burnham. So proud, I was going to grow capsicums and be so posh. The capsicum grew quite tall and then got flower heads on it. I watched it every day and was so excited and then… a bright yellow dahlia emerged. - Sally