plantmanager said: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.

I'm still ripping out mint. 🙄 I had garlic chives pop up too this year, but they are at least easy to get out. I have some to a friend. Is this going to be another mint-sized disaster?

I grew Black Mustard as a green manure in my veg plot- early Spring it was covered in the brightest sulphur yellow flowers that were absolutely covered with pollinators so much so you could hardly see the blooms - well needless to say it ended up staying in there far longer than it should have as it was one of the best pollinator plants in my garden- Im now going to sow the seed i dried off to recreate a patch in my wildflower meadow for early drowsy hungry bees in Spring The young leaf was also nice as an addition to salads - nice and peppery as you can imagine and also did improve the soil and suppress the weeds in the plot too

coconut said:Not plants, but i knew an old guy who would till in sawdust in the fall. He had the fluffiest blackest soil, in an area of Virginia that had heavy red clay soil. His veg patch could be seen from the road, and it was always gorgeous.

I use premium wood pellet horse bedding from high-quality softwood pellets to bed my chickens on - when i clean them out gets put on my veg plots and when well rotted down as i mix it with compost gets used over the winter as a mulch in the flower beds that have died back - my soil is often referred to as black gold, thanks to my chooks bless um

During the winter months, my garden beds become the compost piles where I add kitchen scraps and bedding from the chicken house. "Used" chicken bedding is the best compost! Chooks, I love that name.

Mustard seems like a good idea, with the bonus of early garden greens. Sometimes I find wild mustard greens growing near the chicken coop.

crimson clover is what i usually use, deciding whether this year

In my region one of the most beneficial plants for our soil is a weed with roots that can go as deep as 30 feet into dry hard subsoil and bring nutrients up to the surface that other plants cannot reach. The plant then dies back in winter and forms a layer of organic material and this process repeats.

Over time barren soils are broken up into more friable material, enriched and they start to support grasses, which give way to shrubs and small trees, which are then able to survive and thrive on the plot of land, that has been worked and enriched by the plants over time.

The plant I am thinking of does poorly in fertile acidic soils, but does well in dry alkaline soils, so as it alters an environment over time and enriches it, this action of enrichment then causes the land to favor other plants and the original species dies off.

The plant is Convolvulus arvensis and I have watched it colonize barren soils and turn them into tree filled groves in less than a decade. It has amazing abilities to help soil though animals like cattle or sheep prevent the effects of enrichment and this type of effect is not observed on grazed lands, which decrease in fertility over time.

This is great information, Entwined, thank you for sharing about how deep rooted plants can bring nutrients up to the surface of the soil. The negative side is that your plant of choice, Convolvulus arvensis, Field bindweed is non-native, from Europe and Asia and is considered an invasive and noxious weed in 35 States of the USA. I would think twice before considering using bindweed as a soil enrichment plant and make sure it's not considered invasive in my area before planting it.