You know what grows really well in gardens?

[LeeG]

weeds. Big healthy tough weeds. I’m sitting here watching the sun come up and there’s a 7’ tall tree of a weed just outside the garden fence. Idon’t recall seeing that yesterday.

[bluedog225]

The bamboo seems to like the garden soil as well.

[skuthorp]

Meh, they're just plants in the wrong place…….. for now……..
https://www.britannica.com/science/s...ion#ref1278287

[AndyG]

Reporting from Scotland, with our absurdly heavy clay/coal mix, interspersed with ridiculously large and embedded post-glacial boulders, our best success is slugs.

They do unfeasibly well here, even though we've monoblocked and gravelled the garden, choosing isolated raised beds rather than slug-friendly grass and borders.

I need hedgehogs. And birds.

Andy

[john welsford]

A lot of those "weeds" are edible. Concentrate on those.

John Welsford

[bluedog225]

I thought slugs loved a little tray of beer.

[Jim Bow]

Zucchini (aka courgett).

[Domesticated_Mr. Know It All]

Growing weeds is a hobby of mine.

[L.W. Baxter]

i have learned to weed selectively by hand. meaning, to weed by pulling with bare or gloved hand.

some weeds you can scrape with a hoe and get the roots. some are more pernicious.

the one i hate the most is mallow. deeep tap root. once it gets to a certain size, like the size of an open hand, there is no pulling it. so i hunt it like a hawk.

[L.W. Baxter]

oh, also dock. a monster to pull after a certain size.

[LeeG]

Growing weeds is a hobby of mine.

well done!

[L.W. Baxter]

your pigweed (amaranth) and lambsquarter are not hard to deal with.

norma insists that they are quelites and that she would commonly eat them as a child, but i have not caught her harvesting any.

[hawkeye54]

My 'rescue' Chihuahua absolutely loves slugs and earthworms, and will root around in the yard searching for them ( she taught our Bichon to love them as well ) It is amusing to listen to her searching, sounding like a feral hog.



Rick

[Peerie Maa]

Wild flower meadow plants, zero maintenance until a cut at hay time.

DSC04012.jpg

[Hugh MacD]

Reporting from Scotland, with our absurdly heavy clay/coal mix, interspersed with ridiculously large and embedded post-glacial boulders, our best success is slugs.

They do unfeasibly well here, even though we've monoblocked and gravelled the garden, choosing isolated raised beds rather than slug-friendly grass and borders.

I need hedgehogs. And birds.

Andy

Ducks! Ducks seem to think slugs are about the tastiest thing ever.

[John Meachen]

My slug problems got worse when a neighbour decided that a new fence was a good idea.It involved some of those concrete posts with channels on two sides into which panels drop and the bottom of the panel rests on a horizontal section of concrete.This made it extremely difficult for the hedgehogs to roam freely and the slugs were beneficiaries.

[robm]

The problem I have found with ducks is that they prefer the greens the slugs eat to the slugs. And they can eat more of them, faster...

[robm]

As for the fence: Maybe jack up the fence panels an inch or 2 to give hedgehogs room to get through? Might take some negotiation with the neighbour.

[Peerie Maa]

As for the fence: Maybe jack up the fence panels an inch or 2 to give hedgehogs room to get through? Might take some negotiation with the neighbour.

Or dig an underpass lined with a couple of bricks.

[John B]

We've been removing noxious and weed tree species for the last couple of years on our 5 acres . But what comes with that is regrowth and the big surprise , a particularly tenacious thing called Woolly nightshade( tobacco weed). The things can get to be 30 ft high trees and birds spread them via berry.
So any clean and clear area will sprout up thousands of these things from dormant seeds as soon as they get light after a canopy has been taken out. Took us a while to figure out what was happening.
We have every other weed species of our region too, ginger is an issue, Taiwan cherry, gorse, each with their own problems.

[LeeG]

Any recomendations for replanting in a partially cleared shady oak, hickory, maple, dogwood forest that pigs have decimated the undergrowth?

[Peerie Maa]

Any recomendations for replanting in a partially cleared shady oak, hickory, maple, dogwood forest that pigs have decimated the undergrowth?

You could wait and see what seeds were dormant in the soil. That would be natures way.
If it were the UK, a mix of English (not the Spanish) bluebells, wood anatomy and so on.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

What grows in my garden are:
Roe deer
Muntjak deer
Rabbits
Grey squirrels
Moles
Foxes
Neighbours’ cats

[Peerie Maa]

^ Four of those are good eating.

[wizbang 13]

Gardens, horses, sports,cars,kitchen remodels…
we woody boaters do not have time for these things

[MushCreek]

If your soil is bad enough, even weeds won't grow. I know this from firsthand experience. Our property once grew cotton, which really strips the soil. Now we have hard, extremely acidic clay. Since we're rural, I don't fuss with the lawn any more. We have a 'farm lawn'; it's green, and I mow it when I can't see the mailbox. I have a nice vegetable garden, which we get an amazing amount of food from. I only put money and effort into something I can eat. Even with all of the effort, some things don't want to grow here. I've gotten tomatoes one year out of TEN. I now use 'green' manure, the kind you carry in a wallet. We grow the heck out of whatever is successful. I ate so much okra last summer that my socks wouldn't stay up.

[birlinn]

You could wait and see what seeds were dormant in the soil. That would be natures way.
If it were the UK, a mix of English (not the Spanish) bluebells, wood anatomy and so on.

Wood anatomy?
Which part- the trunk?

[Peerie Maa]

Wood anatomy?
Which part- the trunk?

Anemone, anemone, fecking predictive spelling.

[LeeG]

okra, that’s one trippy plant. My weed has grown a few more inches. Up the hill from it is a 70 yr old Ford tractor that is now a lawn ornament.

[Peerie Maa]

If your soil is bad enough, even weeds won't grow. I know this from firsthand experience. Our property once grew cotton, which really strips the soil. Now we have hard, extremely acidic clay. Since we're rural, I don't fuss with the lawn any more. We have a 'farm lawn'; it's green, and I mow it when I can't see the mailbox. I have a nice vegetable garden, which we get an amazing amount of food from. I only put money and effort into something I can eat. Even with all of the effort, some things don't want to grow here. I've gotten tomatoes one year out of TEN. I now use 'green' manure, the kind you carry in a wallet. We grow the heck out of whatever is successful. I ate so much okra last summer that my socks wouldn't stay up.

We have improved our soil by mulching with our own compost.
We compost everything, kitchen peelings and trimmings from veggies, grass and hedge cuttings, mixed with shredded paper (correspondence and so on), and torn cardboard packaging.
You need a mix of green and brown to promote rot, rather than fermentation which happens if there is too much green and not enough cellulose.

[MushCreek]

We compost everything, but it's not gonna cover 9 acres. I have a half acre project field that I tinker with (any excuse to fire up the tractor). I've limed it twice a year for several years, and grown some nitrogen-fixing cover crops. I keep disking it and working it. It has slowly improved. At least stuff grows out there now. I'd someday like to have a nice grassy meadow that I knock down once or twice a year.

[Kevin T]

Growing weeds is a hobby of mine.

Sweet baby jesus that is a thing of beauty, but Im guessing that's not in your backyard but rather some sort of commercial operation. Yours?

[Peerie Maa]

We compost everything, but it's not gonna cover 9 acres. I have a half acre project field that I tinker with (any excuse to fire up the tractor). I've limed it twice a year for several years, and grown some nitrogen-fixing cover crops. I keep disking it and working it. It has slowly improved. At least stuff grows out there now. I'd someday like to have a nice grassy meadow that I knock down once or twice a year.

Well, I was thinking just in terms of your veggie patch.

Is there a craft brewery near you, from where you can cart away spent hops? They do well as a soil improper.

Grassy meadows are boring.

This gets mown once a year, the hay gets donated to a local stable. English meadows rely on Yellow Rattle to weaken the grasses and let the interesting stuff come through.

[MushCreek]

Where I lived in FL, if your lawn was more than 10" high, the city would mow it for you- and send you the bill. People were anal there about their yards. That's why I live out in the boonies now. I'm zoned agricultural, so it doesn't matter how much the neighbors might complain. Luckily, they're all of the same mindset, so we all enjoy our low effort weed patches.

[Peerie Maa]

Where I lived in FL, if your lawn was more than 10" high, the city would mow it for you- and send you the bill. People were anal there about their yards. That's why I live out in the boonies now. I'm zoned agricultural, so it doesn't matter how much the neighbors might complain. Luckily, they're all of the same mindset, so we all enjoy our low effort weed patches.

As a contrast, our local councils are saving money by allowing the verges, even in towns, to grow into wild flower meadows, to the benefit of bees and other pollinators.
When some council employee screws up and cuts the wrong verge, the council gets snotty letters.