What Not To Do In The Vegetable Garden

You hear a lot of us garden bloggers always talking about what to do in the vegetable garden, but what about what not to do? We all make mistakes.  We all do things that can be categorized under “OOPS”.  I’m going to share one of those “OOPS” moments with you today that quite frankly I’m disgusted with myself for doing. What was my mistake in the garden? I was very carefully weeding the Bermuda grass from around the base of my cucumber plants when out came something other than a nasty Bermuda grass rhizome. It was the shallow roots of one cucumber vine!  My poor cucumbers when into shock so bad that I doubt they will recover. I’ll have to replant. Fortunately I had several vines up on this trellis and at least one of them is still alive.  I added some shredded paper mulch and newspapers to try to keep the moisture in the soil in the off chance that my cucumbers have a chance.  I have other cucumbers in other areas of the vegetable garden so I won’t be completely without cucumbers but these were pickling cucumbers that I was pretty excited about. I’ll still be pickling but without the pickling cucumbers it just won’t be the same.

What was your most recent “OOPS?”

9 thoughts on “What Not To Do In The Vegetable Garden”

  1. Hate it when this happens….no oops right now, well in the garden…too hot out there. Bummed my toe pretty bad over the weekend so walking is painful, that my dear is my big oops!

  2. My latest oops: I let the chickens out to free-range and they went after my 5 squash and 2 luffa plants that were just setting fruit. DUMB! I figured they'd stay to their side of the pasture, but as soon as my back was turned, they high-tailed over to the garden and went after the squash…I don't know if the squash will recover…I'll keep dosing them with worm casting compost tea and keep my fingers crossed.

  3. Not watering last night because I just knew it would rain – oops! Not a drop in northern Alabama.

  4. Sorry to hear about the cucumber Dave. My biggest mistake this year was planting a vining variety of winter squash in my community plot. It completely took over and crawled into my neighbor's plot! Next year I have to remember to plant only the bush varieties.

    Luckily, my chickens have left the squash alone, but they've eaten just about everything else that has leaves.

  5. So sorry about your squash Dave. Mine hasn't done anything. Some blooms but no fruit. I accidentally pulled up a green onion. Ooops, but ok as I had it for dinner that night.
    My big oops was that I dropped a frozen chicken breast {only one} on my big toe & boy is it colored all colors.

  6. I enjoy reading your garden blog.I like working in the garden and you have great tips to follow. Sorry about your cucumber plant. I hope it survives. Recently, It is raining so much that moving my vegetable plants was easy.

  7. Oops! Hope they recover. Me, I never make any mistakes in the garden . . . 😉

    Ok, let's see . . . stepped on a lettuce plant a couple days ago, planted a different variety of bush beans that the rabbits apparently love, forgot for three days in a row to remind the Lawn Man to bring those extra cucumbers to work and now it's the weekend . . . oh yeah, and left some rabbit repellent in the garage during last weekend's heatwave (said repellent that's not supposed to be stored above 110 degrees . . .) Apparently pressure built up inside, the bottle leaked, and it stunk up the garage . . . eeewwww!)

Comments are closed.