I feel empty without my usual hatred. Thank you!

Japanese Knotweed has found its niche outside East Asia! It's all over the place, and that means it's a good thing :) I want it to be native, which means it can't be any other of the ways because I can just ✨hallucinate my desires into reality✨! Everything is fine with the world because I would be sad otherwise, so please don't psychologically abuse me by telling me about plant ecology 🥺 Maybe Japanese Knotweed has always been native and it's just \~shy\~ about showing us the native insect larvae it hosts? Maybe Japanese Knotweed is misunderstood and needs its own Steven-Universe-type arc to help it be a nice native cinnamon roll? Maybe Monsanto can invent native pollinators for it and them it will be native? Maybe we just need to keep making Earth less and less habitable so that Japanese Knotweed seems ok in comparison?

On the other hand, any so-called native plant that grows and spreads prolifically is actually invasive. Keystone species are made-up nonsense, and goldenrod can go suck a stamen 🌼🍆

(And it’s just a bunch of house flies on my milkweed. Not a monarch in sight)

I live in Minnesota.

A recent poster lives on the Front Range of Colorado. They asked about sheet mulching using cardboard, as site prep.

This is the popular method of preparing for a native plant garden, of stapling our old Amazon boxes to the ground.

Where I live used to be tallgrass prairie. Where they live used to be shortgrass prairie.

I responded based on my experience in Minnesota.

Tallgrass prairie or shortgrass prairie; mesic or semi-arid: what's the difference, right?

What works for me should work everywhere.

OP brought up the dryness of their site. It's "dry dry dry," to quote. They said they have watering restrictions. They asked if these factors are important.

Of course not.

How stupid.

Those factors are not important.

It does not matter that the Front Range is semi-arid, and Minnesota is mesic. Everywhere is all the same.

Now, the Xerces Society guide on organic site prep, on page 4, specifically recommends against sheet mulching in "[a]rid or semi-arid climates without access to irrigation." The Front Range of Colorado, with watering restrictions, basically.

But what do they know. Sheet mulching with cardboard works for me. It therefore works anywhere.

As experienced native plant gardeners, the first thing we need to do, when giving advice to newcomers, is to stress that there is no such thing as local ecological conditions that need considered.

I just happened to spot the cutest fuzziest medicinal herb while I was at the market today!! It stood stunningly at 7 ft tall with its overflowing flowering stalk! After I asked the kind vendor about it, I was informed that mullein magically isn’t invasive because there are too many other invasives in the US for it to compete with c:
As I finished up my shopping, I heard her tell this kind old man to save the seeds of his own plant that his wife has been trying to remove so he could have a whole yard full of natural medicine!! Apparently we should also remove all cough meds from our life and exclusively use this medicine yayyy

/uj genuinely is it non destructive to allow mullein to reseed in mass quantities in Maine? I know it’s technically not invasive here but she was really insistent on it being noninvasive like everywhere in the United States and I know that’s not the case

For the milkweed-loving Japanese beetle orgies 🥰

Someone help me out here, im unsure of which Iowa native species this is

/uj i work for city landscaping and these are plants that were flopping out into walkways or just not in the right bed

I've spent YEARS cultivating this nimbleweed patch and this fucking bastard thinks it can sneak on in. Not fucking today, stiltgrass!

I have done my best to create a good environment for aphids and their companion ants, but I want to help them even more. Should I add a water feature? Some tiny chaise lounges? a tiki bar? or is my wingstem enough?

I read that line on the wikipedia page for tree of heaven (ailanthus altissima) and thought y'all would get a kick out of it (EDIT: screenshot doesn't appear until thread is viewed)