Other than reading this...
No, not yet!;~)

Well,
I did unfortunately see shrub give his New Year's best(?) wishes to anyone that still listens!
Does that count?
I did throw up and am still cleanin' up the sofa!;~)

Last year in April we had the big Easter freeze and I had about 200 hosta up to early. Some were already totally unfurled and magnificient. A week of 20 degrees with wind childs to almost zero, plus snow melted all the hosta.

I thought it would be best to leave the mushy mess until the weather turned more spring like letting the mush protect any dormant eyes. WRONG

By the time I could remove the mess, the smell made me gag. I had to cut this slimey goo off, carry the goo out of the bed and fling it down on the ground. It certainly convinced me that rot = bacteria - a STINKY bacteria.

Brooke

Tomato horn worms, ANY experience with those is the GROSSEST!! Had a horrible infestation of them several years ago(too bad they are such pretty moths)

Calvin, you are singing my song here :)

My dirt gardening days are quickly fading into a fuzz of beauty without grossness, (even tho I know that isn't really true), but...

My tropicals days are still fresh in my mind. My last winter with tropicals (and what tipped me over into deciding to give them up...

I had this wonderful light room that was supposed to be great for them, yada yada.

Moving them outside to the deck in spring, I was carrying a huge (16") pot of a beautiful fragrant called Aglaia fragrans (I think -- aka Rice plant). Clusters of tiny, tiny fragrant flowers each the size of pencil lead, and beautiful shiny compound leaves.

I was so proud of that thing, I had found a vendor with a really big plant of it that fall, and it was one of my most prized plants. It was just a glorious big plant and promised dozens and dozens of fragrant clusters.

As I got out of the shade on the deck and into the sun, I saw them-- millions and millions of tan scale, exactly stem-colored, the devils. Covered every inch of the stem I was looking at.

I was so horrified by what I saw, and the realization that I had been looking at this plant all winter without seeing them, and even in the shade of the deck hadn't seen them,,,

I dropped the pot. Just flew out of my hands. Fortunately, missed my feet. Otherwise, I'd surely be hobbling along on bionic feet right now.

Inspecting it, I found that at least 1/3 of that at least 2 ft tall x 2 ft diameter plant was covered completely top to bottom with those scale.

That was the day I decided that I just couldn't physically do the fragrant tropicals thing in winter. I just couldn't face trying to get *all those scale* off that plant.

Took me all summer to psych myself up finally get rid of the last one of those dearly loved but sorely tried fragrants. Fortunately one of my neighbors took a whole bunch.

The problem, of course is that 60-year old eyes can only see detail in bright light, at a particular distance from the eyes. Any further, or dim light, and it's gone. So a big old thing in a 16" pot can't be inspected properly unless it's on a table of a particular height, etc etc.

Decided to do orchids, since I can get them into the detail-seeing zone a lot more easily.

While scale don't smell, the sight of a zillion of them is absolutely disgusting to me.

Thanks for the chance to tell my personal tale of horror. :)

Tomato horn worms, they're the ones that get the white little parasites on their backs right? ICK!!!!! Man I get the chilly willies when I saw those! Turned me off completely! Ewwww!

That would have to be the day one of my little dogs knocked over an entire bottle of fish emulsion concentrated liquid in the greenhouse floor. Oh my Lord.....you can not imagine the smell. I was holding a wash cloth over my mouth, tears running down my face, gagging every breath, trying to clean that mess up. I was sick as a dog for the rest of the day. And, the smell lasted in there for days and days, right in the heat of summer. I was really beginning to think my GH was ruined. Forever.

Fish emulsion, Pat? That stuff really does stink. I only used it once inside the house. Couldn't stand the smell.

I guess smelly grossness is worse than visual grossness... but only because you can shut your eyes. :)

tomato horn worms is why i always cut the tomato with a knife - never just bite into one!!! (no, I did not experience that).
the grossest I have seen is thousands of slugs all over a huge clump of dends. which some-one asked me to divide. needless to say, i could not do it. even the thought of it grosses me out.
sue

Finding my Bapt. Little Dragon covered with scale... and I mean COVERED... a couple of months ago was pretty gross. LOL

For me, the grossiest experience was orchid related. I picked up one of my catts in a basket and felt something cool and mushy at the bottom of the basket. Thinking it was maybe a rotting leaf I looked under and found it was a HUGE garden slug. I had to dislodge that sucker with a twig then try to wash the slime off my finger.

When I was working in a garden centre someone brought in a glass bottle of maggots he said he had found in his lawn....he wanted to know what to do about it.....

I seem to recall that we mentioned that he not store dead animals in his lawn for starters....

it was gross.

I don't know whether or not I'm sorry to have started this post or not - lots of grossness!! I can definitely relate to feeling disgust at seeing huge infestations - there's something about hoards of aphids squirming and scuttling over a bud, or millions of scale plastered over a stem that just makes me sick!

re slugs and cats, sometimes I step on them by accident and I find the aftermath so much worse than when they were alive! Smells definitely add to the unpleasantness - mehitabel's right - at least you can close your eyes! :)

Thanks for sharing! :D

Dirt gardening sounds gross. Soil sounds so much more refined.

Nothing I've experience compares to when I worked at a production greenhouse. Our geraniums were hit hard by botrytis, but my supervisor said other plants had priority so they never got treated. I wound up staying 2 extra hours cleaning up the mess, and it was a fungal sesspool. Leaves and flower head were literally goo melting in my hands. I'll never forget that night *shudder*

as much as I love plants and many kinds, I can never work in a garden centre.... that is definitely dirt gardening!
sue

Back at the old house, my DH decided he wanted to raise and breed koi in a huge plastic tank (think small Doughboy-sized pool!) inside the large glass greenhouse (yes, we did build the greenhouse around the danged tank!).

Try to enjoy springtime orchid blooms with an incredibly cloying, thick smell of uh... male koi donations to the koi population in a very warm tank of water. Just the thought turns my stomach, not a happy smell!

Sharon

I could mention the time I buried the dead squirrel in my garden during the month of July. From the smell, I guess I didn't bury it deep enough. After all, who wants to be digging a really deep hole on a hot, steamy July day.

K

ewwww.

I got home to start this year off with this:

{{gwi:140865}}

Reading the posts above.... I knew there was a good reason why I stick to apartment growing. LOL. Mealybugs are still tame on the recoil scale.

Mealies! Yuck!

My worst moment was watering a plant at a client's office and having an enormous cockroach jump out at me (TWICE within a few months!!). Other yuckies were finding a drowned vole and a drowned bird in my lilypond. Welll, I was actually almost happy about the vole, since he and/or his pals had completely eaten a hardy banana I was trying to overwinter by the pond. See - water gardening can be as gross as dirt gardening!