I'm using red clover over the winter in my garden this year, wish me luck! Thought if it works well over the winter I'd use it around the border of the garden during the summer for the bees

Good Luck SCurtis! I think it's a great idea. Actually, we are planning to do the same thing. I hope it works for both of us.

I have learned through ATP, @dave and others some of the favorite nutrient accumulator plants. I now have lamb's quarter, plantain, vetch and a couple others that are growing in my front yard. But have one that has started popping up the last couple of months and wondered if it has any value other than for the birds. I have at least five pokeweed (poke salad) plants growing in beds. I think they are invasive so unless they are useful to the soil I will eradicate them. Thanks

As far as I am aware, pokeweed is not a dynamic nutrient accumulator of anything.

Thanks Dave, they will soon be gone

wildflowers if your soil is bad depleted it would be a good idea to enrich your soil first with compost and manures instead of depending solely on plants to enrich it for you. that said many so called weeds even things like burdock, dandelions, and yes even poke salad which is high in iron can be chopped and dropped to add many minerals & nutes to the soil while providing mulch at the same time for your plants. just be sure to chop before they go to seed if you don't want tons of "weeds" at the base of your plants.
dynamic nutrient accumulator are called such because they often accumulate a lot of 1 or 2 key nutes or minerals. Diversity is more important than a monoculture of 2 or 3 nutrient accumulators here are some great plants to add to your landscape if you don't have them yet. Many members have already spoken about cover crops and other things that are good to add but perennial shrubs, and trees wasn't mentioned too often. You live in the same zone as me so off the top of my head you can grow Bee Balm, goumis, mulberries, Meadowsweet, sea buckthorn, Siberian Pea Shrub, and honey locust all of which are great for the soil in many different aspects. There are also many grasses like switchgrass, & Indian grass that increase glomalin levels and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi thus helping surrounding plants better take up the nutrients that are available in the soil. Hope this helps.

Ediblelandscaping, thank you for the great info!

Fulva make good wildlife cover , toads and few similar , lot of plants for that though ,
Some combinations of Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus Tuberosa ) , and bark or shrub and tree pieces cut small and thrown together make a pretty good compost , I leave them on the corner of the Patio (cement ) the combination of debris , yard waste ,
Burdock I laid the leaves around a few plants and the soil (earth ) began to darken , So they say the color of the earth (soil ) does not matter , but as far as temperature , it does , (the reason compost burns away so quickly in ,(xeriscape?
Tea plants and so forth , these mentioned I throw into earth bags and let them break down ,,
A warning of the above combination , is ,, better mixed again afterward where you are using the made compost , because microbs , if still active will brown spot your plants ,, they go right on doing the thing even if the plants are live ,, !!! A PH or Whoa there Microbs ,,kind of thing ,
Onions work good in some combinations of the dark , hot places , but Pew what an odor those and potatoes can create ,,!!!

Note , the Green stalks mulched is the above , The root potatoes grow anyway , (Jerusalem Artichoke ) These can all be overwhelming and invasive. 1 Helianthus Tuberosa . 2 Burdock , 3 Cutleaf Coneflower ( Rudbeckia species )

I'd love to grow sunchokes for both a food crop and chop and drop but they don't like our heat. I've tried the red and the white cultivars and both just looked so unhealthy by summer I decided not to grow them anymore. Thanks for sharing your results with us I'm sure many people in colder zones will find this useful.

I've not had luck with sunchokes either.

I will say that the clover worked very well. We planted Crimson clover around our fruit trees. The trees bloom before the clover so the clover doesn't attract bees for fruit pollination. But, it did keep other things from growing around the fruit trees and added some nitrogen to the soil which seemed like a good thing. Crimson clover is an annual and the tallest of the clovers so it's really good at snuffing out turf grass unwanted around the trees. Actually, it's good at snuffing lots of things out! When the clover dies back, you are left with nothing growing around the trunk!!

Crimson clover growing around plum tree in April.

wildflowers said:clovers are also supposed to be a good choice. they are known to be a good choice for planting with cauliflower. I've never grown cauliflower

Clover is what farmers plant to replenish the soil when they let fields lie fallow. It is apparently one of the best nitrogen producers for the land.

We have helianthus tuberoses spreading all over the garden, moles ship pieces to new destinations and they take root.
One I really love but is quickly showing off its ability to take hold is silphium perfoliatum check it out and let me know if you want high germing seeds!
I believe anything that tries to take over, is in fact filling a void that you have not been able to effectively fill the way Mother Nature can and will, for the betterment of the ecology of the earth you maintain, does that make sense? People say nature leaves no bare patches, when possible, unless the area is so scorned that a pioneer plant has not found its way there yet.

I'm starting to relate better to plants that don't have immense stolans nor make masses of seeds, as if their sending out the troops to rally aganst the minorities we wish to help thrive.

at the same time a complex problem arises in our wishes to control and dwarf nature by trying to micro manage what should be a roaring ecosystem and replacing it with shorter then life "cultivated" varieties of our favorite native or even fitting exotic neighbors.
And what may seem fitting one year will undoubtedly become a controversial dilemma as what seemed like a good friendship becomes an unruly household when somebody decides "its not working out" we all grow and expand in different directions,
the goal as humans is to not overshadow or belittle anyone, that said, plants may not be so tender hearted as they can be fierce competitors taking charge of the situation and acting like a unwieldy adolescent bullying anyone smaller, and exploiting the resources all for themselves.

But some magic does come into play right around here as the science of understanding the dynamic relationship mycelium play as mitigators to these burgeoning goliaths, that is to say,
Mycorrhizae dictate species selection for the balance of the ecosystem, almost as if they understand the importance of poly cultures, their biofeedback is so very sensitive as they link everything in and it seems they are very aware what's going on and don't appreciate a certain someone getting out of hand, so they cut off the daily allowances to such individuals before bigger problems arise.
Of course some of these capitalistic giants are exactly the perfect fit for these mycorrhizal interactions to make the most of the energy being distributed to your little piece of heaven, just like in any thriving business, so they continue to direct the sugary sun based source of life into their fungal networks in hopes of one day finding enough supply and demand to entertain everyone in the garden in a equality based fashion.
So this efficacy can still be a representative of the higher photosynthing life forms, at least from the standpoint of ones regional locality, this is to say the mycorrhizae know who is most proactive in turning light into matter that way the fungi have better infrastructure to dwell upon in turn helping them stabilize the overall climate for a more comfortable lifestyle/cycle, while these fungal proprietors go on building micro metropolises they understand the effects of rising above all else and drawing to much attention so as to catch the eye of the enamy. And when you put all your ducks in one pond your bound to run into a stressful scenario since this is not what nature intended. There fore before anyone empire/species makes the head of the table/bed equity must be taken out and stocked elsewhere. does this make me a commy? Im going to go to bed now I hope you followed along on the one facet of how nature runs companion planting through underground bio networks that are always just on the other side. Next time maybe it won't all be about the mycelium. So it will be about climatic factors that come into play for dictating what ultimately compliments our gardens life force. Please excuse my errors I am a human.

Sunchokes grow like mad in my yard, and I'm also in 7b zone.

I'll have to give sunchokes another try.

Steven said:I have a friend you put some mint in her front garden and it pushed up through the ashphalt driveway!
I have some chocolate mint in a pot and it has come back. I keep it on the patio too........don't want it coming through the drainage hole....

I once planted mint, thinking it would be nice to have. I really regretted planting it when it ended up all over my yard and it took years to finally get rid of it all. Definitely be careful with mint! I had the same problem with chives. I still have chives everywhere.

@plantmanager, Karen, I think every one who loves plants has fallen in love with a plant only to despise it when it shows you what too much of a good thing really means. Till you get the last spec of it out, you could become really good at making Mojitos!

True! I was out checking my yard. The mint is finally gone, but I still have garlic chives in many places. My new dog loves chewing on it, so he's trying to help eradicate it.

Anderwood said:Dandelions, lambs quarters, comfrey and borage are all dynamic accumulators. Chop them down and leave them on your beds or put them in your compost. They take up many nutrients from the soil and release them when they decompose.

Not questioningnyou, but I just heard that cover crops should be cut down and either tilled into the soil or spaded in rather than left to dry up and decompose on top of the soil. Has anyone else heard this?

Anderwood said:Dandelions, lambs quarters, comfrey and borage are all dynamic accumulators. Chop them down and leave them on your beds or put them in your compost. They take up many nutrients from the soil and release them when they decompose.

I was at the nursery these week buying some half price seeds and saw clover seeds for cover crops. I so wanted to buy them to sprinkle all over our back yard which is st Augustine, bare spots (caused by fertilizer burn from where the spreader is rinsed) and some weeds. My husband, who is a lawn maintenance guy, probably wouldn't be too happy. 😱 Maybe he'd be okay though since it's just the back yard.