Have you ever just Screwed up BIG TIME?

malik

Man, don't you love it when you think you have it all down and you believe you are perfectly organized and then BAM.....you prove worthy of hanging a handicap sign around your neck?

I was repotting my Black Olive and it was time to water the tree to make sure the new soil was soaked. I started to water and noticed bubbles rising up out of the soil. I started to think man!...Those are a lot of air bubbles...and then it hit me.....those are not air bubbles...those are Soap Bubbles!!!!!!!!!!

I keep a gallon of water that has been mixed with dish washing soap in order to kill small pests in an organic method. This jug was forgotten about and not labled so I had used it to water my newly repotted tree! Wow....I felt like an A#@. Thank goodness it did not have any rubbing alcohol in it yet. I spent the next 5 to 10 min watering my tree to push out all the soapy water I had just put in. I watered until I saw no more soap suds so I'm hoping I did not kill my tree or hurt it in any way.

What about you? Have you ever done something to or with your trees that you wish you could take back? Please share so we can all point our fingers at you and laugh. We can start with me

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RedPine

I have managed to eitheir kill or screw up every nice tree I have ever owned over the years. Some of us just weren't cut out for this.

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Myrtle

I shopped at Home Depot for trees.

I could have bought some really nice tools with the money I've waisted on trees there. I haven't bought one tree there that I would enjoy working on for the next 20 years. They're all junk.


Myrtle

idowatsu

I was getting ready for a trip to Hawaii, I was doing a fungicide spraying cause I have a nice little JBP brocade from Brent and I had sprayed about 1/3 of my plants when I noticed that I was using the bottle full of blackberry killer that usually sits in a different cabinet I had moved it over there to keep all my spray bottles together.ooooopppppssss. they all got showered for the next 10 minutes with only a little reddening on a weak maple in my trident forrest and some die off on a young willow. I was worried cause I was leaving. what happened while I was gone was my water person didnt think I was gone and I lost a 15 year serrisa buhu and the cat was out of food for a couple days. Live and learn.

Glider

Last week I was wiring the primary branch on my best azalea (satsuki subaru). It is a thinner and better ramified branch I developed from the collar of a pencil straight (and too thick) branch that I wanted to replace.

After cutting off the bad branch, I wired the replacement and was moving it into position when 'crack!' I never seem to learn how brittle azalea wood is.

I hope it's not lost. There is a strip of intact bark behind the break, so I left the wire on (after moving the branch back slightly), sealed the break with sealing compound, partially defoliated the branch (just the biggest leaves) and have wired a plastic bag over the whole branch. It's still alive after a week, so I'm hopeful that the break will eventually heal. I'll be gutted if it dies, it's such a sweet little tree with a [i]perfect[/i[] trunk.

zen

Unfortunately, I have about the luck of the Wes (redpine) too.
But then again , hey ,what kinda men would we be if we didn't just keep right on trying, in the face of our many failures, anyway,right?

If at first you don't succeed, tie on a meaner face and go whoop some A#$ !

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lehket

I have a topless tree at the moment. I'm not sure what species it is, possibly some kind of elm. I got it at a club auction last fall. This spring I started styling it. It was too tall, so I pruned it back and wired up a smaller branch to form a new apex. Unfortunatley I wasn't careful enough and I broke the branch. I tried to wire the break together but it didn't heal and the new top died. Annoying, but not fatal. I just removed it and selected a new branch to wire up . . . and broke that one, too. And of course the repair job failed again.

The rest of the tree looks pretty good, though. It just has no top at the moment.

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--Dale
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Co-author of Spiritual Telemetry,
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Mcspeed

Malik, I think you will be fine, a little more than typically suggested, but washing plants etc. with soapy water has been around for some time. Even the kooky gardener guy on the Home and Garden channel advocates that.

But I have been working around the yard with various weed killers and gotten a little hasty a time or two or three and given a plant I want to keep a shower with poison.

I try to avoid calling it an accident though, at least for me I tell myself how dumb I am, and slow down and think. The more I hurry for something, the more likely I am to screw up.

Hope yours turns out well.

Dale - try just raising a branch up a little at a time instead of trying to get the finished position in one bending.

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new4me

Just this spring I repotted to shimps to early(Despite the fact I knew better and friends said its early) and the frost and freezing weather hit and i did not bring them in for shelter. Now i have 2 empty pots.


Rich

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