r/GardenWild

Area - Chicago, 6a

Found this little fella. It was so surreal seeing it because I don’t come across stuff like this in my backyard.

I probably scared it but I left it alone after taking a couple of pictures

Especially if you pee on it. They want sodium and other elements and molecules found in soil, dung, and compost. This type of forage behavior is called "puddling".

So I walked into my garden for the first time since early January and this plant has completely come from nowhere. Has anyone any idea what it is, and how I stop it my spreading. (Please note, that is a rake and a brush it has covered 😂)

Thanks in advance 🙏🙏

Seeing so many more invertebrates after watching The secret lives of bees on BBC ! Such a great programme to learn about our native bees

Area - Chicago, 6a

Caught this little dude doing its thing in my small water pond (100~gallons). So excited to have dragonflies!

I have clay, somewhat rocky soil in the South (USA). Soil tests have confirmed it's clay and very slightly acidic.

Although most of my plants are thriving (20 species, mostly native) all my penstemon hirsutus flop over when blooming, despite being only 1.5-2 ft tall. They're native in my county, in moist soil but not wet, in part shade. Multiple sources say it tolerates full shade.

How do you know if you have "overly rich" soil? I thought that was unlikely with clay.
ETA: when I did a soil test near this spot, the report said P, K, and Zn were all in what they called optimal range. They also gave me ppm for Sulfate-S and several minerals, but without reference ranges. Is there a reliable resource to put those ppms into context?

I want to transform our front garden to a no-lawn zone.

Over the last few years, I have very rarely cut - just 2 - 3 times per year manually by scythe (hope this is the right word; english is not my first language). But unfortunatelly the grass seems to be way too strong and suppresses almost everything I hoped would come up.

I would love to gradually replace all grass with lower plants, like violets, veronica, ajuga, primula and even moss. The goal is to have a blooming area for wildlife where we can still put up a tent once or twice during summer or have the accasional barbecue with friends.

Probably important to mention that this garden is in southern germany.

Do you have any suggestions how to go about getting rid of most of the grass and replacing it with plants and moss? Preferably without needing to rip everything out alltogether down to pure soil.

Should I maybe manually rip out some of the grass and try putting out seeds? Or try putting in established seedlings that I germinate inside the house?

I once read that Rhinanthus can weaken grass, so maybe I could try to establish that?

Thank you so much in advance. Any tipps are highly appreciated!

Planted an assortment of seeds around 3 weeks ago, wanting to know if these are seedlings or grass.

I may be delusional but I think it’s mostly seedlings because of how slow it’s growing and how different it is in color from the nearby grass. But this is my first time doing this so I’m no expert.

Make good habitat and they will come.

Just bought a house and there are tons of these small purple flowers everywhere they are very pretty and im curious what they are

this is year 3 - should i cut any of this back or just wait? when i send these pics to chatGPT its says its mostly weeds and to thin it out so more flowers can grow, but i wanted to see what others might say

More about pirate bugs: Genus Orius - BugGuide.Net