r/Albertagardening

If it is how to I get rid of them and protect the rest of my raspberry patch?
Also I had left these on the plant as I wasn’t sure what they were and by the time I went looking for them I only found and removed the smaller one that I believe is male so the female is still there.
I’ve read about nematodes being used to control the larvae but have no idea how to apply them.

Good morning! About a month ago I made a post asking folks to share their advice and experiences cultivating a clover lawn in Calgary. I wanted to make an update as I got a bunch of super helpful responses to that post and a couple people asked to see pictures. Here is the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Albertagardening/s/KeojmP42kH

To briefly recap: the constant winter/spring foot traffic in our backyard after getting a puppy in January basically destroyed what remained of our already very sad and spotty turf, so I decided to take the opportunity to fulfill a dream and turn the whole thing into a clover lawn.

I dug up and raked out all the turf, got rid of as many creeping bellflower roots as I could find, leveled everything out, mixed in some compost and topsoil, and seeded with a combo of West Coast Seeds' Microclover and Bee Turf seed mixes. We were late seeding because we waited until just before we'd be away with our puppy for two weeks in mid-June to give the seedlings some time to take hold.

The update: my clover lawn is thriving and I'm so happy with it! However, it did take some work to get here.

The biggest thing that I didn't foresee happening was the ungodly amount of "undesirable" weeds that would spring up alongside the clover. Where did they even come from?? Apparently there are seeds that can stay dormant for years under the soil - until you decide to dig up your entire lawn, and then they're like, "Yes! Disturbed soil and no competition! Finally after a decade of waiting it's our time to shine!" These weeds became my nemeses and I ended up spending like three weeks hand-pulling them an hour or two at a time. I found the practice oddly satisfying, but it wouldn't be for everyone lol.

We could have just mown them down and waited for the clover to gradually outcompete them, but because we started the seeding so late, we decided not to mow at all until fall. I'm happy with this choice, as it was easier to identify the weeds without mowing, and now the clover has had a chance to grow thick and lush and we've begun to see flowers blooming from the Bee Turf mix! So far we have Baby Blue Eyes, English Daisy, and Sweet Alyssum all blooming in the yard, and I'm expecting many more blooms before frost hits as they've ramped up a lot in the last week or so. I'm not sure if the Western Yarrow or Roman Chamomile will get big enough to bloom this year, but they're growing well so they should come back next year either way.

We did end up reseeding the bald patches and now that the weeding is done and we've gotten all the recent rain, baby clovers are quickly filling in those spots. I added bone meal per someone on my last post's advice, and it seems to have given them a nice boost! We have tried to avoid walking on the lawn as best we could, but our puppy has been zooming around on everything since June and aside from the couple of corners that he's chosen as his hole-digging zones, it really hasn't impacted the clover at all. Now that it's well-established we're also walking on it more, and it just springs right back up. It also seems to loooove our dog's pee lol. The most prolific of all the weeds that came up was redroot pigweed, but in all the dog's pee spots it was suffering as the pee seemed to actually burn the leaves. Not so for the clover or bee turf, it actually seems to be growing even faster in those areas.

I love looking at the clover lawn every day - it's so vibrant, lush, and green, and now that the flowers are blooming it looks like a meadow. So much better than the brown spotty grass and weeds we had before. It also seems to hold moisture in the ground better, and I've noticed so many more pollinators buzzing around as well. Based on how well it's doing at this point, I'm no longer worried about how it will come back after the winter. We may have to do a bit of overseeding for any patchy spots, and I'll likely add some more bee turf just because I want even more flowers next year, but I feel confident it will overwinter well! I've been thinking of turning the strip along our fence into a native perennial garden before the fall, but I keep hesitating just because now it seems like such a shame to dig up any of the beautiful clover lawn!

As am cleaning up my storage room, I want to transform it into a germination and growing station for plants in the winter, but unsure where to even start indoor growing. The dimensions of these little room is shown by this little diagram I created.

I also need help determining what LED's and good germination station should I use for my apartment. I don't want anything too big for now but somewhere I can put on a shelf and monitor it while it grows up healthy and during winter times.

If anyone can give me advice and guidance then that'll be great,

Thanks!

I grew the Get Stuffed tomato this year as a novelty tomato. It has thick walls and hollows out like a pepper. I filled it with a mixture of salami, capicola, mortadella, Gran Padano, provolone, pepperoncini, red onion, mayo, red wine vinegar, Dijon, oregano, black pepper, garlic powder and chili flakes. The walls held up fine after baking. It was delicious served with a side of some garden arugula.

My zucchini leaves are huge this year! Not a lot of fruit yet but I have some just starting to grow now.

Italian peppers, Miss Maizie, Get Stuffed, Cherokee Tiger, Napoli paste tomatoes and cukes for baby dills.

Hey.

They are sitting on my white raspberry bushes that were given to us from Van Island. Google says they are Raspberry Crown Borer Moths, but they seem to be an East North American thing. It looks like them. Google also has tips for removing, but curious if anyone has personal experience with them.

As a cool note....they look like wasps to scare predators but are harmless...to humans at least.

Hello!

I’ve had this lilac for a few years now and I’m wondering…what’s going on? There’s 2-3 large branches that have started to look very unhappy (droopy and pale in colour). I don’t know what’s going on. Any ideas?

Lots of damage on these guys unfortunately, I haven’t been able to look at the garden too much since I’ve been busy with work!

Potato plants have been looking like this, they’re watered daily, weekly they’re fertilized (miracle-gro), and last year we had issues with slugs. This year the plants were rotated to be planted in a more sunny spot, and I have only been able to spot a singular slug this whole season.

Should I be watering less? Fertilizing less? Different fertilizer? Didn’t have this issue last year and I’m trying to figure out what they need to get better.

Planted ~50 trees 2 years ago. Growing good for the most part, but noticed a couple have black/dead? leaves. Any idea what this is. Alberta Canada

I was unable to use reverse Google image search as well as picture this to find this out. Some Google searches led me to black nightshade but the actual plant itself looks different.

Here is the plant itself https://i.postimg.cc/8Cf1gQk8/20260806-180959.jpg