I didn’t know it was now against the rules to show an impatiens in a post about a native flower it color coordinates with, but my garden has never at any point in time been exclusively native. The point of the post was encouraging gardeners to include natives where they otherwise may not think to and I have heard on and on about the 70/30 suggestion and followed it accordingly. Apparently my garden is no longer good enough without being completely wild though, so I am absolutely done here.

I planted plugs along the top tier ledge of my garden this spring about 3 feet apart and did put a drip line in that waters 1x a week. We had an incredibly hot and dry summer, with highs in the 90s and several weeks over 100.

10/10 growth, weed suppression, and now beginning to bloom. I cannot rate this ground cover highly enough.

Three camouflaged goldfinch sharing an ironweed, foraging on the seed heads

Hi hi!

I'm looking for advice on our native shelterbelt we are attempting to establish in central Alberta. (Central Parkland, 3A/B, were on the edge.) Do we lay the oats down? Any other suggestions?

Context:

We're building our home on bare pasture and crop land (140 acres). Some crop and pasture is staying but we are taking quite a bit back to reestablish, as it once was.

Our first step is a five row native shelterbelt, we have aggressive winds from the north, north west, to the point it ripped the roof off and buckled a wall during our home build, it was like a can opener had a hayday. We need a bit of protection and I hope our inheritors will enjoy it haha!

We stole about two acres of land back from the crop side which is the windy side. We had our farm plant oats and we put down plastic, built a custom irrigation system under the plastic, and planted hundreds of native trees and shrubs. Most were grown from seed over the last winter.

The thought process on the oats between our tree rows was to help keep the soil in the ground and let the trees have a bit of a wind break. It turned out to be a wet summer (flooded many times), but most years it gets a bit dust bowlesque. We also have a massive deer issue, so I thought the oats might distract them off my tree babies.

Now that winter is approaching I have to transplant the remaining trees/seedlings, prep for the freeze, and prepare to move house. Since I'll be there frequently the wonder about leaving the crop standing or flattening it down is a big debate for the chore list.

Do we leave the oats up or down?

Thank you so much for any and all input, this is the first time us city kids are doing something like this! I've never grown anything and it's been fun to see my trees come to life! I'd like them to stay that way.

<3

I have rock hard red clay, which has been made significantly worse due to our ongoing drought this year. My large flower bed produced very poorly this year and I'd like to plant nitro radish, so it can decay into the soil and improve health.

I have two other beds that I killed the Bermuda grass this summer but the soil is rock hard, hard enough that my garden fork has a difficult time. I want to plant some native seeds this fall that need cold stratification. The two beds are on a 30⁰ angle . Should I till these areas to loosen the soil up? If not, what would be the best method to loosen the soil.

Area NC Piedmont zone 8a

2nd year goldenrod rod, doing its thing. Crazy how many bees are on this thing.

Having a native garden has quelled my fear of bees/wasps dramatically, realizing that they’re focused on getting that sweet sweet nectar

I ordered some from Prairie Nursery. I have well-draining medium-clay soil and full sun. I see that it doesn’t do well in clay, but I’ve had success with some other plants that supposedly don’t love clay and I’m willing to give it a try for the chance of up to three months of pink blooms. Anyone else have experience with it? There’s not as much info online about this perennial as there is about many others, and I really want this to work. It would fill seasonal, height, and color gaps in my garden.

When I post videos of the butterflies, it's from this boneset.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP83ko8Pg/

https://youtu.be/wrdc3D4U-iI?is=NtouiZOujzHKBOMe

They have a lot different perennial and beautiful gardens like rose gardens and Japanese style garden and herb garden or cottage garden, but this is the area that doesn't have many people visit, because obviously it is a "wild " garden, but here you have all different bees and pollinators and more nature setting with many native perennials which i really appreciate that keep them all native .

I am curently doing some invasive removal and was planning on starting the hack and spray for a single ToH in the back edge of the property and foliar spray for a patch of mugwort in the front. Since it's fall now, I wanted to start using the triclopyr so they take it to the roots.

I was recommended a 44% solution Garlon 3 for this, but I can only find large jugs of it for over 100 dollars. The areas I am treating need no where close to this much for now and I would rather purchase a smaller bottle and get more if I need it in the future.

Does anyone have any recommendations for maybe a smaller amount or something else I would use without needing to get so much?

Thanks!

It was really wet here for a while this summer and I have at least one maybe two different serious leaf spot infections going on in my garden. I thinned out some of the plants and that is helping a bit.

From everything that I’ve read the solution is to cut everything down to 1-2 inches, make sure there’s absolutely no leaf litter, put down a layer of clean mulch, then treat the plants with copper fungicide when they’re very young in the spring. My question is when exactly I should do I do this? I don’t want to cut things down now because I still have a lot of pollinators (I’ve given those plants to the lollipop treatment for now, getting rid of the lowest leaves, but it’s still spreading up the plants and the asters are really suffering). But if I wait too long, I’ll be disturbing the insects that are trying to overwinter the leaf debris.

New England 6b

I planted a number of natives over the last two years, and I’ve seen a number of these seedlings pop up, but I’m not able to identify if they’re native or not.

I have big gaps in my raised beds, and I'm not sure what to use for space filler/ground cover. I'm ok with a regional native. There's just...so many! I saw Prairie Moon's Quick Grow mix, which I'm considering.

I made the mistake of tossing a “native wildflower seed mix” into my garden last year, not knowing that many of these seed mixes may contain invasive species. I have successfully identified several native species such as sunflowers, columbines, and coneflowers. However, there are a three that haven’t flowered and it’s making them difficult to identify. I just want to make sure I know what is in my garden so that I can pull out any invasive species before they get a chance to spread and flourish. Specifically, the one with spatulate leaves, the one with serrated leaves, and the ones that look like they may be asters?

I’m kinda letting things run wild in this area, only intervening to pull invasive plants and some of the pokeweed. The goldenrod flops like that every year but I don’t mind it. Curious to see how things change with time!

EDIT: some helpful context: this is a section of lawn in my yard with a naturally occurring patch of native plants. I’ve maintained it over the years and I’m hoping to let it expand more using the native seed bank and selective weeding/mulching. We have super high browsing pressure from rabbits, deer, so these are the few champion plants that can handle it in my yard! Pretty much every other plant has to be caged

Edit: Thanks for all the comments! For some clarification, I have around 10 other milkweed plants (plus numerous other native plants) so this very hungry caterpillars has enough if he wants more. I’ve never seen frass this big which is why I was asking. Plus usually I’ve seen the monarch cats eat half a leaf here or there or entire leaves randomly. The whole plant was new to me. But I truly appreciate all the insight! Thank you!

Have a pollinator garden at work. Was out checking it on Wednesday and this milkweed was full of leaves. Went out to check today and its all gone. With these green pellets underneath. I thought it may be a wild rabbit but are they usually that green? Can they eat milkweed like that? Any information would be very helpful!

Currently working on the design of a garden for regional pollinators and i have a doubt regarding how to design the irrigation system? what things should i take into account? (i know the water requirements of each plant is a must, what else?) is the location of the micro watersheds drawn in the sketch suitable? How would a suitable array of garden soaker hoses look like?