Lol. I could see me doing that.
My list of mistakes is Very Long. Most recent- a prize apple tree that I raised from my own benchgraft had outgrown its plastic spiral trunk guard so I figured its bark was tough enough to not need a larger hardware cloth cage that would require me to go the hardware store, make a cage, etc. Well this winter something girdled it. So now I am making hardware cloth cages for the remaining trees.
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Hambone, I would gather scionwood now and try bridge grafting. If it’s girdled all the way at the bottom you could try grafting rootstock to it.
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Thanks for your good suggestion but I decided I have too many apple trees and am converting that spot to pawpaw, much less headache.
Trying to pull down branches on a Karmijn during its dormancy. CRACK. Luckily it survived as a Dr. Suessian looking thing.
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This isn’t a stupid growing mistake and should come under “using fruit” but this thread was already established for people to confess so I thought I’d use it for that.
So, after 4 years of growing cherries and all kinds of challenging and work, I finally got 2 big bowls of cherries this year. I do the hard work of pitting a whole bowl of them (3 cups) and put them on the stove with water to make preserves. I baby it for about 20 minutes until it cooked down enough to add the sugar. Most of you probably know this is when it can get risky because it will scorch much easier after sugar goes in. So I walk in the other room and start watching sports highlights on ESPN. You know the rest of the story…next time I think about me beloved cherries and bounty of all my work, its because my smoke detector is going off and the whole batch- about 1/2 of my total take this year, is completely ruined!!! Never been so mad or felt so dumb. At least it was only 1/2 and not my whole crop- which is only because I didn’t have a bigger pan! ha.
Oh well. The world goes on and I can get over it. But it would help to know that someone else has done something equally dumb- either while growing or using the fruit you worked hard for! Anyone else ever waste a lot of their work by killing it either on the tree or in the kitchen?
Your dumb friend,
Kevin
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LOL! Well no, I have gave up when i first started cooking in getting something to gel, and just used it as syrup. But that is about it! Yeah you can’t leave the stuff as you found out!
I transplanted some Lilies of the Valley into a perennial bed. Big mistake. Very invasive and spreads underground in a big network.
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Grafting Kamijn de Sonnaville and Calville Blanc apples on Blake’s Pride E. pear and Korean Giant A. pear.
Grafted Harrow Delight pear on peach trees, thinking it’s Harrow Diamond peach.
Triple stupidity, hard to beat 
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Good luck. I think you have exceeded my realm of what I thought was possible. Please let me know if you see any sign of life with the peach/Harrow Delight pear. If you need and Winter Banana scion for interstems just let me know and I will leave some extra on my tree for this winters scion sending.
Calville Blac happily perched on Blake’s Pride. Kamijn is also happy on A pear. I could not get good angles of the others for pictures to show you.
Thank you for the offer of Winter Banana. I would send you Pm in the winter.
Harrow Delight pushed buds and a cluster of flowers. It does not look good after that. Definitely is dying.
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Kevin,
Several years ago I was making cherry pie and needed to make the cherry pie filling first on the stove. I am king of improvising and could not find corn starch and used a bit to much flour. I improvised on the dough because I was short an ingredient or two. In the end I improvised to much and made a beautiful pie that boiled over in the oven and had the consistency of fruit leather. My girlfriend didn’t say a word for several minutes while eating the pie and then said tastes different than normal and said I think we usually eat it with vanilla ice cream. Having good people in your life makes even bad pie better.
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My worst one was … I sent scion to someone else and PAID to have them grafted.
When I got them back, (just grafted) , I planted them and every day I wiggled them to see the they had “stuck”
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Training cherry and pear to an open center, Trying to grow blueberries, Mowing over unmarked bench gafts, Not having an idea what kind of spraying program to have in place, Planting plum and sweet cherry varieties that are disease magnets, Severely thinning fruit by applying sevin a couple weeks after fruit set, Grafting with electric tape.
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I got some Shizuka apples and loved them. The next spring went to the place to get scions. Owner directed me to the tree. 2nd one past the far driveway. I got my scions and added to a tree in my yard and grafted onto a rootstock for a friend. That fall went to get some Shizuka and headed for the 2nd tree past the far driveway. 2nd tree was Red Delicious, 3rd was Shizuka. So did I not remember correctly which tree I cut from? Did I get Red Delicious (sometimes confused with cardboard soaked in store bought apple juice) or Shizuka? It fruited this year and the apples have the 5 bumps on the bottom.
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I’m so glad I resurrected this thread…I’m sorry, but it really does help ease my pain hearing that I’m not alone in foolishness!
@clarkinks , I really, really liked that post! I could almost see your Girlfriend’s face as she was eating that pie, trying to think of something positive to say and coming up with “it tastes different”. hahaha. Yea, I make lots of “different” dishes at times! haha.
@Drew51 , I, too, have made my share of jam and jelly that ended up being pancake syrup! haha. Buts great for that, so that isnt so bad. The other extreme is when you cook too much water out and a few days later the jelly/jam is crystalized! But now I’m usually able to get it just right now by recognizing the way it looks when its boiling. Of course, if I’m in the other room watching ESPN that technique isn’t too good!! ha
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Too many errors to specify, really.
Overall, I would say it is my inclination to push my zone.
When I lived in Phoenix I should have been happy to grow figs, citrus and Rosemary.
Here in the Southern Rockies I should have gone for rhubarb, grapes and shirt season euro plums before I attempted anything else.
Accidentally upside down scion…my very first graft. It’s doing well today but it is slow. It has been used as a dwarfing method…it works!! Ha ha…
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Spend a good part of the day combating a mistake made many years ago of planting a few black locusts too close to the orchard. We thought we could harvest some fence posts and hadn’t read up well enough to know about its invasive habit of reproducing through root suckers. Chopping them down isn’t enough. I have one sore back from all the roots I sawed up and dug up.
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