Top 3 worst gardening habits I have. 

#3 Over watering - My first thought, most of the time, if something is looking rough,, flood it. 

#2 Letting potted plants sit too long - Roots growing in the ground, other pots, between boards, in cracks and under bricks. 

#1 My worst habit (and I’m trying to break it) pulling off leaf bases too early. I’ll bet half of the stuff I kill is because of this. Anybody else addicted to this bad habit? 
 

That’s just gardening for you after a while and many dead plants you learn. 
1 My top gardening habitat is growing way to many palms 

2 buying way to many seeds 

3 wanting every palm on the planet 

It could be worse though having 3 top bad lifestyle habits so I get away with those for now! 

9 minutes ago, D. Morrowii said:

... #3 Over watering - ... #2 Letting potted plants sit too long - ... #1 My worst habit (and I’m trying to break it) pulling off leaf bases too early. ...

They are all common habits. Not real bad ones but they are results of being heavy into the Palm and plant world...

#3 Over watering is the desire to keep everything healthy with the knowledge of what would happen if the opposite were to take place. As long as the potting soil or dirt has decent drainage, then you're just wasting water. Some water hogs are not going to mind the excess flowing through the drainage holes. With time and practice and you can hand water faster, or dial in the irrigation. It's better than forgetting to water and going out to a burnt forest.

#2 No matter how much plant time you have, you cannot pot up or plant everything when you want to. A direct result of the addiction. I try to pot up whichever subject needs it the most, but if I don't have the space or dirt at the moment I can't. It becomes a chain of actions. Got to plant A to make room to pot up the B to a larger container then have the room to divide and pot up the compot of C's into a tray of liners, and so on and so on.

A side effect is developing the skill of carefully extracting plants rooted into the ground, neighbors, bricks, etc. It comes in handy.

#1 Everyone wanting their plants to be healthy and seeing them all green and with no brown is natural. I have done the 'early pull' myself and it takes that added patience to stop oneself. It comes from when cleaning and weeding in a hurry and grabbing that brown leaf that isn't ready. The best way to break the habit is to trim instead of pull. As you are trimming, and the leaf base feels loose, then take the whole thing. If not, trim what you can and come back later for the leaf bases. 

If the plant has a habit of tightening its brown cut leaf bases and 'stacking' them, then you got to go further into patience and leaving the leaves on intact and waiting until their weight and nature can remove them entirely. Tough to watch I know but always remind yourself the species does it this way normally. Yes, the plant may have brown but think of what is healthiest before beauty.

Ryan

41 minutes ago, happypalms said:

That’s just gardening for you after a while and many dead plants you learn. 
1 My top gardening habitat is growing way to many palms 

2 buying way to many seeds 

3 wanting every palm on the planet 

It could be worse though having 3 top bad lifestyle habits so I get away with those for now! 

Those are probably 4, 5 and 6 on my list then. 

35 minutes ago, Palmarum said:

They are all common habits. Not real bad ones but they are results of being heavy into the Palm and plant world...

#3 Over watering is the desire to keep everything healthy with the knowledge of what would happen if the opposite were to take place. As long as the potting soil or dirt has decent drainage, then you're just wasting water. Some water hogs are not going to mind the excess flowing through the drainage holes. With time and practice and you can hand water faster, or dial in the irrigation. It's better than forgetting to water and going out to a burnt forest.

#2 No matter how much plant time you have, you cannot pot up or plant everything when you want to. A direct result of the addiction. I try to pot up whichever subject needs it the most, but if I don't have the space or dirt at the moment I can't. It becomes a chain of actions. Got to plant A to make room to pot up the B to a larger container then have the room to divide and pot up the compot of C's into a tray of liners, and so on and so on.

A side effect is developing the skill of carefully extracting plants rooted into the ground, neighbors, bricks, etc. It comes in handy.

#1 Everyone wanting their plants to be healthy and seeing them all green and with no brown is natural. I have done the 'early pull' myself and it takes that added patience to stop oneself. It comes from when cleaning and weeding in a hurry and grabbing that brown leaf that isn't ready. The best way to break the habit is to trim instead of pull. As you are trimming, and the leaf base feels loose, then take the whole thing. If not, trim what you can and come back later for the leaf bases. 

If the plant has a habit of tightening its brown cut leaf bases and 'stacking' them, then you got to go further into patience and leaving the leaves on intact and waiting until their weight and nature can remove them entirely. Tough to watch I know but always remind yourself the species does it this way normally. Yes, the plant may have brown but think of what is healthiest before beauty.

Ryan

I can agree with most of what you are saying there. At least for some of it I know its wrong but I still do it…..hence a bad habit, I’m working on them though. The first step is always admitting you have a problem! 🙂

1. A common one, leaving palms in pots too long or at least not moving them up a size when required.

2. Growing palms that have a marginal or low survival rate. I wager it comes with the territory when there are only 4 or 5 reliably hardy palms here.

3. Indecisiveness. I'm forever procrastinating over siting a planting, which somehow fits nicely with № 1 and № 2.

1. Watering more than needed.  I like to water, but its also a go to from my childhood in the desert where its needed depending on the plant.  Here its not needed and knowing when is important as is using a fast draining mix.  Learned that over time but still love to water🤷‍♂️.

2. Having too many plants to care for correctly.  It is called an addiction for a reason lol .  This is where prioritizing and strategy come in like others have said.

3. Wanting to grow things that are marginal or impossible in my area (all the plants really, and who can do that?).  The catostrophic failures when they die can be shocking, a heat death this last week was very dissappointing and quick, when until a few days prior it was growing and happy.

There are days i say "what are you thinking?" But the successes and rewards are nice, and its better than just consuming and sitting on my butt.  The heat wave we had here recently did a lot of damage to some of my plants, but i just remind myself that it was expected trying some of the plants im trying.  Some are recovering from other issues also, so i just try to keep perspective and it makes me feel good about my hobby.

1) Saying, "That's it!  I'm putting the garden in maintenance mode!  No more new stuff!  I'm just going to take care of what I got until it goes." loud enough for anyone else to hear. 

2) Changing my planting style.  It used to be that I wouldn't put anything that didn't have a shot at surviving 20F in the yard.  Now, it's roughly 50% stuff that would die outright at that temperature.  It has had its perks for the time being, though.

3) Watering certain palms that hate my tap water during a dry period.  I'd be better off chancing it with drought.

Too many plants in too small an area. There is no focus and the eye only sees green.

1. Spending weeks thinking about the perfect spot to plant something, only to run into a large oak tree root and decide to find the spot with least resistance. Eventually ended up with no real landscape theme, and a bunch of random plantings. On the plus side, it’s looking pretty cool now that things are getting some size.

 

2. Same as above with too many seedlings and purchases, and every year for the past 5 years I tell my wife I’m going to get my landscape license and sell some stuff. Shadehouse is over stacked and so is the pool patio.
 

3. Zone pushing is the last. I think the tough part about 9b in central Florida is feeling tropical 10 months out of the year, and wanting the plants that make it look like it is. Will probably lose 2/3 of the garden next 2010 type winter, but i also think it’s worth enjoying the plants while I can.

21 hours ago, RiverCityRichard said:

2. Same as above with too many seedlings and purchases, and every year for the past 5 years I tell my wife I’m going to get my landscape license and sell some stuff. Shadehouse is over stacked and so is the pool patio.

Bring everything you don't want to the CFPACS Meeting and put it in the auction.  

Do we really have to limit this to just 3? Ok, I'll try. 

1) I either pay way too much attention or totally neglect everything. I can't find that happy medium. 

2) Not so much of an issue right now, but buying plants for the wrong reasons - I wanted a queen because I read they grew really fast. I was completely unprepared for how fast they grow once they turn pinnate. I wanted a Pritchardia Pacifica because they look awesome, and actually this probably belongs under #1 because there's at least a possibility I kept it alive if I kept up with it. 

3) I'm terrible at picking old leaf bases. Especially the spindle since it's right next to my chair. I pick at them like scabs. 

Honorable mentions: spending way too much money on the wrong things. Bottom watering pots. Poor lighting conditions indoors. Letting seeds sit around for too long before germinating. Writing posts on PalmTalk that are so long, nobody reads them. 

44 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Do we really have to limit this to just 3?

  ..Ohh Maann,   ....Limiting this topic to  -just - 3 things?  ....


" Worst  gardening mistakes / habits / etc, etc "  i've seen being made,  constantly / repeatedly,  ...Everywhere i've lived??.. 

Lordy!  that list is long... 

On 8/5/2025 at 8:09 PM, RiverCityRichard said:

1. Spending weeks thinking about the perfect spot to plant something, only to run into a large oak tree root and decide to find the spot with least resistance. Eventually ended up with no real landscape theme, and a bunch of random plantings. On the plus side, it’s looking pretty cool now that things are getting some size.

 

2. Same as above with too many seedlings and purchases, and every year for the past 5 years I tell my wife I’m going to get my landscape license and sell some stuff. Shadehouse is over stacked and so is the pool patio.
 

3. Zone pushing is the last. I think the tough part about 9b in central Florida is feeling tropical 10 months out of the year, and wanting the plants that make it look like it is. Will probably lose 2/3 of the garden next 2010 type winter, but i also think it’s worth enjoying the plants while I can.

#3 is exacerbated when your buddy 5 blocks over IS z10a.

3 hours ago, kinzyjr said:

Bring everything you don't want to the CFPACS Meeting and put it in the auction.  

I have $7 and a Starbucks gift card with $6.28 on it if that gets me anything bidding by proxy 😂

2 hours ago, SeanK said:

#3 is exacerbated when your buddy 5 blocks over IS z10a.

About 2 miles south, 1 mile west, and 20 miles east lol

1. Pushing climate boundaries (this winter RIP Geonoma stricta)

2. Collecting way too many palms than my space allows. 

3. Planting too close together. 
 

They are bad habits in some ways, but on the flip side the same habits have yielded great results at times. Not sure I’ll ever change 🤣. 

18 hours ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

They are bad habits in some ways, but on the flip side the same habits have yielded great results at times. Not sure I’ll ever change 🤣. 

I guess that means gardening is a lot like college.  It's not quite as fun without taking foolish risks and a few youthful indiscretions.  

21 hours ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I have $7 and a Starbucks gift card with $6.28 on it if that gets me anything bidding by proxy 😂

33 minutes ago, kinzyjr said:

 

Look man, 5 years ago that woulda bought a large vanilla mocha latte. Today I think it just gets your barista to remind you that they take tips..

This is therapy letting me know I’m not alone in my habits. 😅

1. I definitely leave palms in pots way too long. 

2. Collecting way too many palms with nowhere to put them. (I guess that’s why they are in pots too long.) I have slowed down on the palm hoarding a bit.

3. I definitely have planted too close together. I recently had to pull two R. Sapidas that were planted too close to B. alfredii’s. More editing will need to be done down the road as well.

 

I made a concerted effort to NOT plant too close together but I messed up anyway and planted a borassus Aethiopum within 15 feet of a beccariophoenix alfredii.  That was a huge mistake since I loved both palms and ended up editing the borassus as they grew together.   WIth (2) palms that grow to 30' wide, 15 feet of separation is not enough to limit crown damage.  

My second messup was planting a bismarckia in a low spot that always collected water.  It looked OK but after a very wet august 5-6 years ago(22" rain) the weevils smelled the stress and killed it quickly.   I hav3 a second biz that is 35' and doing great in a high drainage spot where water doesn't collect.  No weevil action on it.

My third most foolish mistake was planting a caryota mitis withing 4' of the house.  It was fine until 8 years later it had grown (8-9 4-7" caliper trunks and was slapping the house in wind at 25' tall and still growing over the house.   I could see in my mind all dead trunks falling after flowering onto the house.  The result was another edit. 

I had a bunch more fails on mostly smaller palms and seedlings in containers, like trying to dig up a small copernicia hospita planted in a shady spot.  It was shocked/stunted for years and now lives, but its a lot slower/smaller than the two I didnt plant in shade and dig up.   

I have had great successes too so I have no regrets.  Expect to fail, but try to limit the numbers and keep getting better with the plan.

 

I never know if I've cleaned my seeds enough. I famously had no idea chambeyronia seeds needed to be cracked like a walnut. I squished a bunch of Sabal Louisiana and thought they were rotten, but no - the seed inside is just teeny teeny tiny. There's a couple randos that I took a nail file and sandpaper to and probably burned through everything. I really just need to Google the seed and what it's supposed to look like when it's clean and ready and sometimes I feel like cleaning a million seeds and some of them give splinters and I give up and they'll either sprout or they won't at that point. 

Then I read posts on here from people who have been growing from seed for decades and they don't clean anything, they just throw it in dirt and leaves and grow beautiful palms lol.