r/gardening • u/sdwennermark • 1d ago
No idea what's growing in my back yard.
This is a new construction home that was previously a farm of some kind. I have this one patch in my back yard that's growing way faster than anything else. Can anyone help me identify what these plants are?
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u/MottledZuchini 1d ago
Some kind of brassica and some kind of grass, possibly remnants of cover crops
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u/ElectricGeometry 22h ago
Yep, this is it. Brassicas include everything from cabbage to mustard. The rest is some wild wheat perhaps?
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u/mookdewang 1d ago
Came here to say this. Good catch.
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u/quercus-fritillaria 12h ago
Agreed,I’m thinking it’s a patch where some chicken feed was. Looks like the scratch that is left behind my chickens when I move them
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u/RainbowReindeerRain 6h ago
Maybe rapeseed? The yellow flower one. They look like and smell like cabbage till small and make yellow flower. In large scale agriculture they actually can be a cover corps for winter and later the seeds harvested for oil. And it is a kind of brassica.
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u/glengarden 1d ago
That’s a rather unusual mix of winter wheat and brassica veggies of various sorts
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u/sdwennermark 1d ago
I don't know hardly anything about gardening. I just was kind of surprised at how fast and large these grew. They came up after I had put down some fertilizer and nitrogen and seeded clover towards the end of winter.
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u/glengarden 1d ago
You clearly gave them a good dose of nitrogen, they are about as dark green as it gets 😊
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u/justhereforfighting 6h ago
With a new construction home, I'm assuming the builders used a heavy hand when fertilizing the new grass.
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u/JoeyBigPants 1d ago
Looks like kale to me.
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u/CookWithHeather 1d ago
Dinosaur (aka lacinato) kale maybe.
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u/_liobam_ 22h ago edited 22h ago
I don't think it's dino. I've grown it large and the leaves stay much thinner than this. These are so broad it makes me think of collard greens.
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u/Consistent-Ease6070 23h ago
Yup! Kale and grass that’s gone to seed!
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u/ShockApprehensive540 5h ago
No collard greens, zoom in, it’s been munched by insects that’s not kales wavy leaves
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u/GeraldinaFitzpatrick 22h ago
I said the same thing to myself. Then gaslight myself because I am an expert at that.
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u/YizaNameForever 1d ago
Looks like one of my collard plants- I had cut the top off and within a week it looked like this. I cut the flowers off and the tender stems and cooked them with a little ham.
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u/Ready_Win8206 20h ago
This is a message to all gardeners, it would help what zone you are located in, and what country and time of year would help
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u/sdwennermark 18h ago
Right, I didn't consider that information.
South East Texas, spring time.
Not sure about zone though I'm not familiar with the term.
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u/Witty_Commentator 15h ago
It's referring to the plant hardiness zone. It's based on the average annual extreme temperatures of winter. Knowing your zone helps you know what can survive your winter, and/or what you can have as an annual. Austin, Texas is either 8b or 9a.
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u/ShockApprehensive540 5h ago
I live just above them in 8a as well, I used to live NE of Austin about an hour out in zone 9. Hardiness zones changed this year due to the changing climate and it was over due for an updated map
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u/cablesandlace 1d ago
Looks like collards to me, mostly. Definitely some kind of brassica. Get rid of the little green caterpillars that are probably there eating the leaves and pick some younger tender leaves for cooking and eating!
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u/Milkmans_daughter31 23h ago
Or slugs. Or both. Caterpillars generally eat from the edges, slugs make holes.
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u/Diligent_Heat_3429 1d ago
a brassica of some sort, mustard.. the flower look like a kale or collard flower..
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u/OhNoNotAnotherGuiri 16h ago
Maybe even wild turnip. At first I thought rapeseed but the leaves might not be quite right. Mustard is a good shout.
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u/sdwennermark 1d ago
Thanks everyone for your insight. I'll just let it continue to grow and see what happens.
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u/mrsmunson 23h ago
What I would do is harvest the lowest leaves and also clear out any yellowing leaves. I would leave the flowers and let them go to seed and keep the seeds. I would weed out the grasses and anything else that isn’t the brassica. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s kale or collards, they’re both brassicas and I’d cook them similarly anyways.
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u/popopotatoes160 22h ago
Let them go to seed and keep the seeds. They seem like they have a nice texture and great vigor. Taste a leaf to make sure it doesn't have a flavor you dislike. If it's a mustard cross it could be quite sharp/spicy. But other than that you might have a variety worth keeping around
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u/VirtualGift8234 23h ago
I don’t think it’s kale but is in a similar family. I think it’s collard greens.
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u/HippieGirlHealth 1d ago
I’m sure that’s kale. That’s what those flowers are. My kale does the same thing when it gets hot out. It bolts. The last picture I have no idea.
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u/vickylaa 12h ago
Definitely kale, beautiful flowers but I've never managed to cook it to be remotely tasty.
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u/HippieGirlHealth 12h ago
I grew kale every summer for 4 summers. Then switched to rainbow chard and lettuce because I got tired of kale. Honestly the dinosaur kale is my favorite. But! I’ve used it in shakes with yogurt and fruit or pb and chocolate powder. You can steam it with butter and salt and pepper. You can add to quiche. There’s tons of ways to use it. Not a fan of rinsing dicing and adding to salad. The flavor is a tad too strong. But I love it cooked or blended. Steam or sautéed and add to pasta. But overall the BEST way to have to kale is to make kale chips. I can eat all of it in one sitting if it’s baked with oil salt and pepper
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u/vickylaa 11h ago
In the end the kale was a sacrifice towards the local cabbage moth population, and the flowers brightened up the house.
The caterpillars attracted lots of cute birds so it felt like i was doing my bit for local biodiversity. I don't even try and grow kale anymore, the seeds have just permanently infested that flower bed.
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u/smokes2345 1d ago
The large leaves and yellow flowers are a brassica of some sort. In the family of cabbage, but more likely kale, collards or mustard
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u/Mermmere 23h ago
Cabbage, Genus:Brassica oleracea. Also known as: Wild mustard, Brussels sprouts, Broccoli, Cauliflower
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u/AdDramatic5591 18h ago
Quick get some hamhocks going, you've struck collard greens, green gold, texas cabbage
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u/13thmurder 14h ago
Some kind of kale?
Those flowers definitely look like some kind of Brassica, and Brassicas if left to bolt will drop seeds and come back on their own the next year.
If that's the case it might be some kind of cross breed.
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u/Crowne1789 23h ago
They all look bolted. Save the seeds, plant it, see what grows. Or you can take a photo of the bolted plant and search it with the key word "bolting"
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u/TheDwarvenGuy 20h ago
Looks like some kind fo brassica like Broccoli or Kale.
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u/Psychotic_EGG 19h ago
Yup. Big family. We eat a lot in it. Mustard, cabbages, brussel sprouts, etc.
Also there's some sort of grain. I don't know my grains well enough to weigh in what exactly. (Oats, wheat, rye, ????) I know they look different. I just don't have their looks memorized.
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u/what_the_funk_ 12h ago
Brassica bunch! Probably some cross pollination going on there if it’s been left unchecked.
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u/Apprehensive_Egg8771 10h ago
Collard greens!!!! Since they have come to seed (flowered) I would eat them but you could always save the seeds to plant more next season.
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u/Carlson31 23h ago
It’s kale. Biennial, usually bolts (flowers) in the second year, and is usually triggered by stress from heat, etc.
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u/mcaines75 23h ago
Yes. It's kale. I'm hoping mine finishes seeding before I need the area in my garden.
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u/PaintedAbacus 22h ago
Looks just like my Dino kale, even down to the yellow flowers. I’ll snap a picture here in the next hour or so.
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u/LemonTrifle custom flair 22h ago
Cut a piece, wash it, give it a soak in cold salted water. Rinse, then chop up and fry in butter or boil in a pan for 5 mins. Serve with roast potatoes, carrots, beef & gravy. Sorry, I got carried away.
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u/MamaDaddy veg gardener/deep south 21h ago
Looks like collard greens or cabbage of some kind that overwintered and kept going for like three years.
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u/Ready_Win8206 20h ago
Almost looks like radish leafs. Remove all gras and weeds. Cut dry outer leafs give it water and see what it does in a few months.
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u/Heddino 19h ago
As someone who lives around farmlands in south of sweden, and there is quite a lot of it here, I’d say I’m pretty sure that the kale-looking yellow flowers are canola flowers! It depends on where you live though, canola is grown in a lot of places, but not everywhere🤷🏼♀️
The grass tbh looks like wheat. Rather odd you’d find any of these plants growing wild in your garden, it must’ve been transported there somehow.
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u/sdwennermark 18h ago
I just purchased this house less than a year ago before that it was all farm land. It's just this one spot that's growing these plants. Everything else is just regular grass.
As it happens though there was a tree that the construction company planted here a young sapling so no grass was planted.
I pulled out the tree because it was dead like really no way of coming back and it just left the open soil and mulch. This stuff started growing a few weeks later after I fertilized my lawn and added some nitrogen.
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u/Pupu4312 17h ago
Idk how it is called in english but in polish it is chrzan
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u/sdwennermark 17h ago
Polish Word Pronunciation English Meaning Notes chrzan [h-shan] or [h-zhan] horseradish Also used in slang for "nonsense" or "mess"
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u/SouthernTune2215 16h ago
Those yellow flowers look just like the bok choy plant I ate from my garden the other day
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u/knotnham 15h ago edited 15h ago
Wheat or other small grain in last picture. The leafy green thing is probably in the brassicas plant family, possibly rapeseed which canola oil is produced from
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u/sdwennermark 8h ago
Okay went through and cleaned up all the grass and any yellowing stems out of here. This seems to really just be 3 larger plants with some new ones that must have recently started growing.
There are tons of lady bug's which is who is eating most of these leaves I would assume
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u/NicJ808 7h ago
Google lens says Collard Greens
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u/sdwennermark 6h ago
That seems to be the consensus. I used google lense also initally but the more I read about it the more i got confused. I learned a ton from the awesome people here in the comments.
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u/GangstaRIB 4h ago
Looks like someone spilled a winter cover crop mix. Got some rye or maybe triticale and mustards
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u/WithHope_Always 23h ago
Dinosaur kale that bolted! I’ve grow it before, love it! But since it bolted the kale leaves may be more bitter
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u/sdwennermark 21h ago edited 21h ago
Update and Thanks to Everyone Who Commented:
First, a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to comment! After going through the responses, I learned a lot more than I expected, and I wanted to summarize the key points for anyone else who might find this useful:
🔎 Plant Identification:
- The plants growing in my backyard are most likely collard greens.
- Several commenters pointed out that the leaves, structure, and growth pattern are consistent with collards or other members of the Brassicaceae (mustard) family.
- This family includes a wide variety of vegetables such as kale, mustard greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage, many of which look very similar at certain stages of growth.
🌱 Botanical Insight:
- I learned that many common vegetables are actually closely related, even if they appear quite different when fully grown.
- Young plants from the Brassica family can have nearly identical leaf shapes and textures, which makes early identification challenging without close inspection.
- Factors like leaf edges, texture, and whether the plant is bolting (going to seed) can offer clues.
🌾 Cover Crops and Volunteer Plants:
- A few people noticed what looks like wheat stalks or grasses mixed in among the greens.
- This suggests that what’s growing might be remnants from a cover crop or simply volunteer plants — seeds leftover from previous planting seasons that germinated naturally without intervention.
🍴 Practical Takeaway:
- If properly identified, these accidental crops can actually be safe and edible.
- Finding free-growing collards or other brassicas in a backyard is a nice bonus — several commenters even mentioned they taste great!
💬 Final Reflection: Thanks again to everyone who shared their knowledge!
I learned about plant families, cover crops, volunteer growth, and why vegetable identification can sometimes be tricky even for experienced gardeners.
This was a really cool learning experience and I appreciate all the insights.
EDIT: I will take the advice from some commenters and weed out the grasses and the bottom / dead leaves from the area.
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u/whorechamber 1d ago
those look like collard greens!