Reveal your garden sins. You know better, but....

What is a 'tchotchkes'? It's option 5.

Seq , if you don't know what it means, them certainly you don't need it, lol

I commit crape murder. I must be one of the oddballs who likes the topped off look. True , if I'd known better I would have selected a cultivar that wouldn't require pruning, but it's years too late.

I do not like the cultivars that get 20-30 feet tall if unpruned. Flowering is skimpy plus being so tall you can't see them anyway. Hurray for crape murder, I say

I looked up that word and now have an idea of what it is. I don't have anything in my gardens as 'decoration'; just 100% plants. We do have one small item but it is setting on a rock on the garden border so I don't count that :)

Well, out of necessity, I have to commit crape murder. The dwarf variety that I planted in my front walkway bed was supposed to top out at 6 feet....wrong...It gets chopped back every year to keep it from getting into my gutters 15 feet off the ground.

Whew, I am not guilty of crape murder! (What is crape murder anyway? I could not find a definition that made sense in this context.) Okay, now I'm not sure. I am guilty of #7. :-(

WIB~
SW

I don't dead-head or fertilize as much as I should. I'm pretty good about that first dose of fertilizer in the spring, but then it gets so dang hot, it's easy to just let it slide. I will, however, keep my tomatoes fertilized. I just have a lot of perennials and other plants that get ignored.

Crepe murder is cutting back the top of a crepe myrtle severely.

This message was edited Mar 3, 2015 7:56 AM

"I don't water/fertilize as much as I KNOW I should"

Actually, most gardens don't need any fertiliser at all - the real question to ask is "I fertilize far more than I KNOW I should"

Resin

I have a very hot site for my container garden. I am so ambitious when I first plant something, but when it gets hot in the summer my good habits wane and my bad habit of not watering takes over. I've thought about planting all xeric plants, but can't resist the ones that take a lot of care :-(

I checked the last one. I'm not telling! ! ! !

I don't have any crepe turtle so I can't be guilty. Whew! What a relief! :-)

Seriously, I probably should trim some things more severely than I do. I should probably fertilize my plants more than once or twice a year. There are so many things that I should do, and some I shouldn't. But we won't talk about that. ;-)

Thanks for the definition OutsidePlaying.

WIB~
SW

My parents live in Phoenix and committing crape murder actually saved their plant.

I'm bad about keeping my garden tools in good shape, especially not keeping my shears and pruners cleaned and sharpened. I also need to do something about my "memory lapses" when I'm out working in my garden. I "forget" where I leave things. I'll get side-tracked and leave a shovel leaning up against a tree while I go do something else. Uh, now where did I leave that shovel? Scratches head ....

Haha, I have a similar memory issue. My wife bought me a tool pouch that I can put on my belt. I keep my small tools in there. I did leave my gardening knife out by the side walk on time though and my neighbor picked it up and returned it. That could have been an issue since there are small children next door.

I don't take care of my tools. After I use them, I don't clean them off and have been known to leave them out in the rain.
I also have trouble making sure all my potted plants get watered enough during the summer. I work at a garden center and am tired when I get home. I usually have no interest in filling watering cans from my rain barrels and slogging them around to water the 20 or so containers I have.At least we had more rain last year, so it wasn't as big a deal and my plants were much happier.
Barb

I am guilty of most of the above, but the worst is...I rustle plants. I'm hoping I never get shot ;). If the place is obviously abandoned, I figure it's OK....but once I was rustling some rose cuttings at what appeared to be an abandoned house....found out later it wasn't. Fortunately no one was home and didn't come up while I was there.....I have been known to knock on doors to ask for cuttings and starts and have never been turned down!! That's the only way I know to get some really terrific heirloom plants.

I don't live in Vegas, but whatever happens in the garden stays in the garden. 'Nough said.

Sylvain.

I commit what some call crepe murder. They are MY crepe myrtles and if I need to cut them back, I do.

I do all...but I don't crepe murder, I can't reach that high anymore. ☺ I admit I had to look up tchotchkes are, I like the urban dictionary's definition.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tchotchke

:-)

Birds & Blooms magazine has article on garden myths.
One was about fertilizing. Too much fertilizer will keep apples from producing, Lilacs from blooming & on & on it goes. Over fertilize your lawn & it pollutes the rivers.
We all know what happens when you dump it on tomatoes. I sell lots of tomatoes in summer to people that only have real nice foliage & no fruit.

My only sin is no sunscreen. Skin cancer isn't real bad.

Nothing to do with gardening sins but I had to share. Don't know if all varieties do this, but in my area, I've noticed several crape myrtles with multiple trunks which seem to fuse and become one trunk over time. I find it interesting and wonder how old do they have to be before the fusing begins. I once saw one tree that had fused about 3 ft from the ground. It had to be really old. The one in this pic has fused about 8" from the ground.

PS: I wished sometimes I could just stop in the middle of traffic and photograph whatever gardening quirk catches my attention. Def. not doable in Houston traffic. I was lucky to catch this fusing phenomena during a red light.

I was taught that crapemyrtles are technically shrubs that we train into tree-shaped plants. Like many other genera in their family (Lythraceae not Myrtaceae, so they're not truly myrtles*), they have a tendency to produce abundant stems arising from a rather tenacious root system. Generally speaking, the potential mature dimensions of the cultivar dictate the number and vigor of stems/"trunks".

*The U.S. National Arboretum calls them crapemyrtles (no space) for a reason: http://www.usna.usda.gov/PhotoGallery/CrapemyrtleGallery/CrapeTable.html