The most common misconceptions about the garden

For years, countless pieces of wisdom have been circulating about how to properly care for your garden, how to combat plant diseases or how to drive away pests. Unfortunately, not everything that is written is always correct. Read the truth here.

You can hear a lot in everyday gardening smart tips and advice. Through scientific research, closer inspection or simply common sense however, many have come in recent years Falsehoods to the light. This is how it became, for example Rumor refuted that spinach especially ferrous be. A misplaced comma caused millions of well-meaning mothers to plague their children with it.

Even if it's fresh spinach instead of 35 only 3.5 milligrams of iron per 100 grams contains: You should not do without it, because it is still healthy! In our Picture gallery you can read more exciting fallacies from the world of plants.

You can also find more interesting gardening misconceptions in the books ’275 Popular Misconceptions About Plants and Animals’ and ’New Popular Misconceptions About Plants and Animals’.

Are you already up wrong gardening advice fallen for? Then take it up now and correct it in the forum!

+17 Show all The most common mistakes in the garden (17) Bananas grow on trees, wrong. Even if the plants grow meters high and look like palm trees: the banana plants are perennials. Their leaves can reach unbelievable proportions, up to five meters long and up to a meter wide. Their leaf sheaths, i.e. the lower, narrow part of the leaf, nestle together during growth to form a pseudo stem that is hollow on the inside. The imperial crown drives voles out of the garden. Tests have shown the plants to be ineffective, as have the ultrasound devices that are often advertised on the market. In the food-poor period from November to February, laying poison bait is a good way to control voles. However, when used correctly, traps are still the most effective. For animal welfare reasons, you should use box traps, e.g. B. the "vole catcher" from Neudorff, prefer, because moles sometimes get lost in the simpler pincer traps. Lemons are the fruits richest in vitamin C. Lemons are real health bombs, but contain "only" around 53 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams of pulp. Most of the vitamin C is found in rose hips (up to 2900 milligrams per 100 grams of pulp, depending on the variety), sea buckthorn (up to 1200 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams) and kiwi fruit (300 milligrams per 100 grams of pulp). Spraying coffee protects plants from snail damage. It would be nice if it were that simple: Scientists got to the bottom of the matter and could not find any repellent effect on the pests. It is better to use slug pellets early on, i.e. before the slugs can even be found. Vegetable nets or snail fences help in the kitchen garden. The walnut is a nut; the name is misleading because, botanically correct, the walnut is a solitary stone fruit. If it is still hanging on the tree, it has a fleshy, green shell and the hard core sits inside - that which we eat. When the fruit ripens, the outer shell opens and releases the seeds. By the way: The same applies to the coconut, which is also a stone fruit. The houseleek (Sempervivum) protects against lightning strikes. The Teutons believed that the houseleek warded off the wrath of the god of thunder, called Thor or Donar, but unfortunately no scientific study has been able to prove this to date. The main advantage of such a green roof is its insulating effect against cold and heat. The only thing that reliably prevents a lightning strike is a lightning rod. Carrots and onions keep the pests away from each other, but tests by the Biological Federal Institute did not show this effect. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the positive effects of mixed cultures: For example, carrots are not only onions, but also cabbage plants are good bed neighbors. Strawberries are berries. No, even the little red fruits are botanically correct not real berries. Because the straw "berry" has many small nuts on its juicy flesh. That is why it is called a nut fruit. After flowering, the flower base swells and turns juicy red. Then small, intergrown seeds form, which can be seen but hardly noticed when eating. Conifers are evergreen, by no means. The best known example of needle-shedding trees is the larch (Larix decidua). Their needles turn golden yellow in autumn and then fall off. A second example is the primeval sequoia tree (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which also loses its needles towards the end of the year. And another mistake: the conifer, which is often referred to as the blue spruce, is in reality mostly a blue spruce (Picea pungens ’Glauca’). There is also a real blue fir (Abies procera ’Glauca’), but it is planted much less often. You can recognize them by their soft needles and cones that grow upright. The fly agaric attracts flies. The name fly agaric comes from the fact that the mushroom is poisonous and can have mind-altering effects when consumed. In the Middle Ages, herb women - also known as witches - are said to have used the toadstool for intoxicating experiences and sometimes believed they were flying. It is also true that the toadstool was used to combat houseflies in the past. It was cut into small pieces and the cubes were stirred into warm milk, which was then left to sour in an open bowl. The lured flies ingested the poison of the toadstool with the sour milk and died. The potato is a soil crop, which may sound right at first glance, because the potato grows in the ground. Potatoes, however, are not the fruits of the Solanum tuberosum plant, but rather the bulbs that serve for the asexual reproduction of the plant. The fruits of the potato plant arise above ground from the small, white flowers and are red and poisonous. The seeds contained in the red fruits are responsible for the sexual reproduction of the plant. So you could sow these seeds and get new, but not true-to-variety potato plants. Rowanberries are not allowed to be eaten - that's only half the story. The berries of the mountain ash are only inedible when eaten raw and excessive consumption would result in nausea and diarrhea. However, due to their sour, bitter taste, it would not be possible to consume appropriate amounts. The cooked berries, on the other hand, can be processed into a delicious jam. Here is the recipe: After the first frost, the fruits are harvested. Then they are cooked for about half an hour until they are soft. Then the soft-boiled berries are passed through a sieve. The sifted part is mixed with exactly the same amount of caramelized sugar. Let the whole thing boil for a few minutes and pour the jam into a mason jar. Copper protects tomatoes from brown rot. There are numerous recommendations in circulation, for example piercing the stem of the tomato with copper nails or burying copper wires in the root area. Copper particles should be loosened and transported into the leaves. Since copper has a fungicidal effect, the tomato is spared from the brown rot, so the conclusion. In tests, however, there was no effect in comparison with untreated plants. All the tomatoes fell ill at the same time. In addition: If so much copper were dissolved to kill the fungal spores, the fruit would no longer be consumed because of the high pollution. Only rain protection and resistant tomato varieties are reasonably reliable against brown rot. Roses have thorns. Botanically correct, Sleeping Beauty should actually be called Stingling Beauty. Why? Because the rose has thorns, not thorns. Thorns are lignified, reshaped short rungs that cannot simply be snapped off. Spines, on the other hand, are very easy to break off, as with the rose, because they are only outgrowths of the bark. The hawthorn and the barberry bear thorns. Poinsettias have white or red flowers, the actual flowers of the poinsettia are small and inconspicuous. The colored leaves that surround them are not petals, but transformed leaves, so-called bracts. Their job is to attract insects for pollination. Nettle broth helps against aphids. The stinging hairs of plants contain a histamine that is supposed to kill aphids. Tests have shown, however, that spraying nettle broth against lice has the same effect as treatment with water: some of the lice are simply rinsed off, the other part lives on. Nevertheless, the nettle broth also has its advantages: It contains valuable minerals. A small copper nail can kill a beech tree. A common rumor without the slightest truth: if you drive a copper nail into the trunk, it cannot harm the beech tree any more than a conventional steel nail. The tree just keeps growing.