u/skiing_nerd

This spring my 2nd year kiwi vines got hit real hard by the frost and I posted seeking advice. I got loads of reassurance and some very helpful suggestions for better trellising by binding them as vertical as possible up fence posts.

I moved them to right up against my fence posts and strung cable for them to grow along, the male on the higher cable and the two females on the lower cable 10' or 20' away on either side so the vines will eventually overlap. Wanted to say thank you for the help and show how much help it was

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/1ss6bhu/frost_damage_on_my_kiwiberry_vines/

Over the past year and a half, my partner and I cleared, tilled, and/or sheet mulched an ambitious amount of garden space and planted mostly native plants. To keep maintenance manageable, we've been trying to ID volunteer plants when they're little and let the native ones grow, focusing our efforts on keeping our new plants alive and removing so much stiltgrass and other invasives.

This has blessed me with a variety of very vigorous volunteers filling in space, including enough American burnweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius) to wall in our "purple room" of purple-blooming trees and flowers, the wettest corner of our fenced garden becoming a jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) bed, several boneset plants whose species we're not yet sure of outgrowing the shrubs in our native hedge, a beautiful pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) dangling over the fence, and beds of delicious edible lambsquarters growing taller than me as they kindly keep me from having to buy leafy greens during the cyclosporiasis outbreak in the US.

This might not be the forever home of all of these plants, but letting native plants go wild has been a huge help in filling in space, attracting bumblebees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, giving fireflies and other native insects food and shelter, and generally making our yard more interesting.

I've been seeing monarch butterflies around my garden but hadn't spotted any eggs or caterpillars until this morning, when I found two big caterpillars chomping away at my first year seed-grown swamp milkweeds, and another tiny baby one on the underside of a leaf. So happy to see it helping right away! Bonus photo of one of the possible parents checking out some of the milkweed a few weeks ago

Are we a joke to you New York Times??

I neglected a few planters this spring and was rewarded with this monster jewelweed volunteer in one of them. Trowel for scale in the second photo