Hi all. When I bought my house I also inherited several plastic raised beds. The previous owner told me to mound up the dirt every winter so the soil wouldnt expand and crack them.

I was wondering if this is actually necessary or just something they thought they needed to do. I have never heard of this before but then again, Ive always only had wooden ones before.

Im trying not to till the soil too much so Id like to avoid mounding it if I can. Does anyone here have plastic raised beds? Do you mound the soil or leave it as is?

Cant even identify a simple ladybug.

Not sure Im ready for one of these 'internal combustion' cars I keep hearing about. Until they can sort out the risk of the flammable liquids you have to put in them from catching fire it seems too dangerous and impractical.

I have not tried this yet but I am...intrigued.

Ground ivy can be found in many countries around the world and grows aggressively. It is often viewed as a highly invasive weed in lawns and gardens. It is notoriously hard to remove and control.

The good news? It tastes like mint (sort of). Ground ivy makes a good mint substitute and can also be used as an herb in cooking. Makes sense since it is part of the Lamiacae family which includes well known herbs such as basil, mint, oregano, and thyme.

Being an abundant and easily identifiable weed with few lookalikes, its an easy plant for beginners to cultivate. It is best to pick the smaller leaves as the larger ones can be bitter.

!

Note: A bit like cilantro, the taste is a bit polarizing. Some people love it, others find it unpalatable.

After trying (and failing) to rescue an overwatered Echeveria plant from the supermarket, I sort of got addicted to succulents and went out and bought this one. I have no idea what Im doing but Im hoping starting with a healthy one will be a better introduction.

Thrilled to have y'all here but this is a very niche topic. How did you find this place?

I wanted to share a few useful resources for those out there who are interested in finding edible weeds but don't know where to start.

Picture This App, and app that uses AI to identify plants taking a simple picture. I have found this app to be quite accurate but remember to always check and see if there are look-alikes out there which may not be edible.

Eat the Weeds, blog style website with a huge number of entries on edible weeds. A very useful resource to start finding edible weeds you might encounter.

Wild Edible, another great blog style source outlining several wild edible plants. Importantly, entries often have a look-alike section which can help you determine if youre looking at the right plant.

If you have any other trusted resources, share them here!

Hi all. I have quite a lot of hairy bittercress in my garden. I think it rode in on the compost I got this year. Ive been removing it from directly around my pea plants but in the open spaces of the garden where its really taken off, Ive surrendered and let it be.

My question is this: Should I be removing it or should I leave it as a kind of live mulch. It doesnt appear to be hindering my peas or other plants in that bed but if it will do long term damage to the soil Id rather take care of it now.

Anyone have any experience with it. Is it worth the effort of removing or do I just let it be?

Thanks!

I realize this wont be the highest quality image in this community but as a total amateur who knows nothing of insects, I got excited seeing this little ant dutifully dragging a dead centipede(?) across my garden bed as I was weeding.

I have an old laptop which didn't exactly have top of the line specs when I bought it back in 2016. It does, however, run Ubuntu pretty competently (yes I know there are better distros, no I am not going to use them). It was cheap. As in it came with a Celeron in 2016 cheap, so it isn't the speediest little guy.

All that said, a lightweight browser is the goal. I currently use Firefox which is ok but any improvement in speed is ideal. I'm not doing anything crazy with this thing so as long as I can do some basic web browsing I'm happy.

I used Midori back in the day but it wasn't exactly...stable at the time. After that I stuck with Firefox. Still, I'm hopeful there's something better out there. Any advice from the veterans out there is appreciated.

Got these old ice cream tubs from a local ice cream place. $1 for a dozen. I wanted to increase my rainwater storage (currently have 2 rainbarrels). Realized I could stack these guys up as much as I needed. A few drilled holes and a spout off a cracked kombucha kit and bam. Homemade rainbarrel.

This is part of a set of daisey-chained barrels so I had to keep it to 3 tubs for height reasons. All told it only adds about 8 more gallons of storage but every bit helps. You could stack as many as you wanted though, within reason.

I kept it simple but you could also add additional sealing between the bottom-lid connection to limit loss that way. I will add a few extra pictures in the comments.

Hi folks! This is potentially outside the scope of this community but Im hoping some botanistically minded people might be able to help me out here. I have several rose plants on my property and Ive always wanted to harvest the rose hips. The problem is they turn yellow and then rot long before the first frost.

I was wondering if anyone knew why this might be?

Bonus spider in picture.

It aint much, but its honest work.

I got this little Echeveria for free from a large supermarket giving them away. It is obviously in very poor condition but I wanted to try to nurse it back to health. Ive grown many things but succulents are not one of them. Looking for advice on how I might give this little guy the best chance possible.

First obvious problem is they overwatered the crap out of them. Currently letting it dry out next to my Aerogarden so it gets plenty of light.