So without gilsellers gardening, the economy would vanish?
The worst part is, this might be a true statement. We have no way whatsoever to know how many gilsellers are running 15 lv1 mules gardening leaves constantly, especially if they farm their own cuttings.
Also, if you go for leaves, there's that inconvenient little side effect called ice ore that might AH for a fair deal, so they come out even more ahead (though the economy loses a tiny bit of gil)
I suspect you were right to not take it too seriously, but on the other hand it really wouldn't surprise me to have SE announce "hay guyz we banned 15 thousand level 1 characters that all happened to be gardening in synch" either >_>