Todays Gardening Failures

[Soylent Green]

Well today I went out to pick some lovely Japanese Mustard Greens for my dinner only to find that the Cabbage White Butterfly caterpillars had turned them all into paper doilies. I then decided to turn a 5 litre metal beer barrel into a novelty planter. Three drill bits and a angle grinder disk destroyed and all I had was a lump of scrap metal to show for it. Some days it's just a better idea to stay out of the garden

Anyone else want to confess their recent gardening disasters?

[veggiechicken]

Gardening disasters Nope - I never have any
I have challenging and unrepeatable experiences

[Soylent Green]

I'll have to remember that VC Thanks

[julesapple]

I have to use spray on my honeysuckle - it has botrytis. I hate sprays.

Oh, and I went and forgot to do it. Again.

[PyreneesPlot]

First and second plantings of florence fennel have bolted. I guess they hated a cold wet June followed by a blistering hot and dry July. Salvaged some for risotto this evening and the rest will be home to swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

[hellybore]

I had to throw a courgette plant on the compost heap today - I was growing it in the blowaway and I had noticed the last few fruits that had formed were rotten at the ends. Yesterday the leaves all looked droopy so I watered it some more - today the whole plant had collapsed. Saw it was rotting at the base. Whoops - think it might be a case of over-enthusiastic watering!! Oh well, we live and learn...

[Soylent Green]

Hi Hellybore,
That can be tricky can't it. Courgettes like lots of water but then again they don't like soggy bottoms. I have had a few fruits turn grey and the ends and drop off, but on the same plants other fruits have developed just fine. It's my first year for courgettes so it's a steep learning curve. The bumble bees and mason bees seem to like the courgette flowers and I often see two in the flowers at once.

Hi Pyrenees Plot,
That's a shame Florence Fennel is marvellous, although I've grown it only once and that was a complete disaster. I'm thinking that next year I will grow more Japanese salad leaves but under netting to keep the Cabbage Whites away

[bearded bloke]

Remember to regularly check your crops for growth,I forgot to keep an eye on what was happening under the radish leaves


So anyone for French breakfast,lunch & supper

[daviddevantnhisspiritwife]

I've er, had a few erm things go awry this year.

- Runner beans collapsed, my structure needed more support in the middle. [Corrected]
- Late completion of brassica frame means I am caterpillar squisher #1
- Despite the above, tray 1 of spring cabbages got covered in CW eggs tray 2 hoping for better treatment
- Late planting of broad beans = no beans and space wasted
- Not seen a single spring onion despite sowing hundreds of seeds
- Spinach bolted (only made one small batch of sag aloo)

Lots more, but I think my brain has put them in the 'do not remember' area so that I press on with new gardening challenges undeterred!

[SarzWix]

Must not grow shark fin melons ever again, but particularly not in the bean bed. They are thugs, and have started trying to grow up the bean frame as well as out of the bed on all sides (this bed is 9m by 3m!!), and it hasn't set a single fruit

[Martin H]

This year I discovered that slugs LOVE tobacco. I planted out a bedfull of Virginia Gold, but a week later the slugs had munched their way through the lot. And there was me thinking that the plants would taste nasty and the pests would give them a wide berth...!