What I Wish I Knew BEFORE PLANTING My Wildflower Meadow: 3 Key Insights 

This is a really great video, give some insight into kind of seeing something other than the bells and whistles and the roses, and gives an opportunity to look for and to expect the unexpected. Thank you so much. Great job!

Great stuff and will continue to follow and support your channel. I love your asters. As for mugwort, I just keep pulling it up with the aid of a hori hori knife. After 3 years of disciplined attention, I'm down to just a few recurring plants. (Just like everything.) My nemesis has been goutweed but again, same approach. And as you discuss in your point #3, I do eventually spritz on a little glyphosate on the nagging stragglers; I do not feel bad about that as the benefit of killing the residual rhizomes far outweighs any semi-persistent chemistry. I have a friend who has a ton of lesser celandine (Ficaria?) They are obstinate about not using herbicide. So, as this little demon produces tons of little tubers that can never be fully removed, they will never fully control their invasion. You have to choose your outcome.

Also, in the battle of the goutweed - some portions of the garden I simply covered and solarized (3 years, mind you.) I built some "quarantine" beds to relocate plants I wanted to save before laying down the heavy garden cloth and mulch. With a bastard like goutweed - even a little tiny piece of root is enough to sprout new growth - so the quarantine bed is important to give visibility to any missed bits. Also, waiting until the plants are "dormant" in winter will not be very effective - as if you want a foliar spray to do its job, the plant needs to be pre-dormant in the fall, where any sugars produced by photosynthesis are traveling down into the roots... along with the herbicide. Alternately, I use a re-purposed Windex spray bottle with a little herbicide to spray very early emerging plants in spring. Don't let them get too big so they can start producing a lot of sugars for summer growth. And I do tend to prefer glyphosate as it combines quickly and strongly with the clay of the soil around a root of the target plant, so does not travel between plant's root systems as quickly as other herbicides. If anyone suggests you use 2,4-D, be sure you are NOT applying the ester form (e.g. butoxyethyl ester) as it has a seriously long half-life in the soil and can really impact waterways.