Episode 113 – Garden Horror Stories

We asked for your horticultural horror stories, and you delivered! So in this episode, we’re leaving behind our usual format and sharing your stories, from the funny to the frightening.

Brooke:

We bought a house last fall where the previous homeowners didn’t know what they had on their property and did no plant management. We inherited about a 2,000SF wall of buckthorn along 2 sides of the property and a poison ivy wall covering the chimney in the photo attached (as well as poison ivy scattered throughout the entire landscape). We were able to kill the poison ivy with chemicals, but still had to remove sprouts multiple times this year. We had a landscaping company remove the buckthorn and while we have a “lawn” there now, it’s actually a thick blanket of weeds/invasives that we keep mowing down. We’re currently trying to figure out how to best tackle this 2,000sf area. Add this to thistle and tree of heaven growing in most beds and chipmunks getting into the crevices of the house… we’ve got a great gardening haunted house for Halloween. Hooray for home-ownership!

And here’s the photo of Brooke’s poison ivy nightmare:

Corey from Netta’s Nursery in Posen, Michigan:

At my family’s nursery, we noticed some of our potted trees showing signs of chlorosis. Since our water naturally has a high pH, we were advised to add a powdered form of iron to the soil. A product was recommended, supposedly perfect for potted trees, so we decided to give it a shot.

The next morning, one of our high school-aged waterers burst into the office, wide-eyed, exclaiming, “It looks like someone was murdered in the apple trees!”

The powdered iron we’d applied had turned a deep, blood-red color when mixed with water, staining the soil. In some areas, it even ran from under the pots in streaks, creating a scene that could have been mistaken for a crime scene.

To top it off, my sister sent us a video of her washing out the iron-stained buckets from the job. It looked as though she was scrubbing away evidence from a scene in Dexter, with splashes of red everywhere (she underestimated the product she clearly didn’t gear up properly).

It took us a while to stop laughing—and tidy up the row before customers arrived.

Julia writes:

Our entire backyard was a horror story. When we moved in 2 years ago, it had been neglected for years. Bamboo had invaded, and the previous owner tried to combat it with cheap tarp and huge rocks. And for some reason, we keep finding broken glass all over the yard! Broken window panes, fine China, porcelain Halloween decor, encased baseball cards, you name it. We’ve easily picked up 50 pounds of broken glass from every area of the yard. Not the safest yard for our dog and two little kids! This horror story does have a happy ending, and landscapers ripped out the bamboo, tarp, and rocks and put in a bamboo barrier, so it looks like a yard and not an overgrown jungle now. But we’re still finding the odd piece of broken glass.

Karma writes:

My garden horror story occurred at my previous home so I cannot give you pictures. My horror includes Bermuda grass and bindweed. Our lush, beautiful Kentucky bluegrass that we planted by seed started getting Bermuda grass creeping in. There was no way to control it and soon the entire neighborhood suffered as did our lawn.  I prefer a lush, green, run barefoot as the grass tickles my feet. How many hours did I waste trying to pull that vertical growing curse that hurts the feet?
Bind weed came years later but a horrible,  hard to kill, weed. Solution…. we moved to a new development.

Judy’s story:
Our garden horror story just happened this season. I have some roses and other plants that I wanted to get planted but we knew we couldn’t get to right away so my husband put a couple strips of plant fabric down in our large garden. It was the cheap stuff because we didn’t know about the good stuff at the time. Now it has become incorporated into our garden with weeds and grass growing in and through it, and no way to pull it up and not sure how we are going to rototill it for next spring. I’m thinking my husband is going to take the chisel plow through it, and then I’m going to have to walk around and try to pick up the pieces. Fortunately, it was only a small section of the garden. Lesson learned!! I included three photos of our garden in a past year, so you can kind of see the size of it.