Just moved and am planning to start gardening in the yard, but would like to know what's already growing. Any help appreciated!

2nd and last one are hostas. Good shade plants. 1rst one I think is a weed but if you could zoom out on it it will make it easier to know for sure what you have there. 3rd one I don't know the name but here it's a weed. It's actually a tame on as long as you cut it before it flowers and goes to seed and when soil is workable pull it out. Otherwise it can take over the garden areas.

pepper23 said: 2nd and last one are hostas. Good shade plants. 1rst one I think is a weed but if you could zoom out on it it will make it easier to know for sure what you have there. 3rd one I don't know the name but here it's a weed. It's actually a tame on as long as you cut it before it flowers and goes to seed and when soil is workable pull it out. Otherwise it can take over the garden areas.

Thank you! Got lots of weeding to do it seems lol First one was a mistaken picture, was trying to get one of these big guys.

Looks like Burdock

pepper23 said: 3rd one I don't know the name but here it's a weed.

Let's not call plants by that 'w' word...
If we don't know the name of something... Let's say that.

I think the plant under question might be a virginia anemone.

Third one looks like a Cranes Bill/Geranium

Interesting...
In researching plant... might be motherwort...
https://goodoak.com/info/weeds...

All geraniums/cranesbills do not have square stems. That third pic is common in Minnesota woods here, I never bothered to try to ID it. Not very garden worthy, IMO, but its not going to invade everything, either. Yes, the last pic you show separately is Burdock. You'll want to remove that, unless you have a particular use or liking to it. It's a biennial, and yours will be flowering this year. Don't let it go to seed. Flowers themselves are meh.

https://www.gochisokitchen.com...
Or maybe try adding the burdock to the menu.

I think the flowers are pretty...
Unfortunately it's a struggle to keep any going at my house...

Even when I was in parts of the country where burdock grew easily, I didn't notice it to be particularly aggressive...

ymmv...

I saw an entire documentary on PBS about Japanese Gobo, which is what we call burdock, according to a search I did while watching. Are the two the same species? IDK but if it is the same thing, it seems like good info to have, to me, that the Japanese consider it worthy of growing a whole field of it and digging 3 feet down all around it to get the root. That made me want to try some. The emphasis seems to be that it is healthy, but if it didn't taste at least more toward the good than the bad, few would bother with it.

At the least, if I had a volunteer I didn't want - and I went to the trouble of digging it up, I would definitely want the reward for the effort of adding it to the menu. There should be plenty of recipes for gobo out there. I'm not sure it's served alone, or as 1 element of a dish with a lot of other things in it too.

purpleinopp said: I saw an entire documentary on PBS about Japanese Gobo, which is what we call burdock, according to a search I did while watching. Are the two the same species? …
That made me want to try some. …

Yes, they are the same species, except the Japanese have been selective breeding them for centuries.
Do try some from a Japanese grocery store. Or, you could order some seeds from Kitazawa and grow one of the domesticated varieties.
There are techniques for making growing beds with lined trenches to make digging deep roots easier. I think it's too much bother.

Kinpira Gobo! Many different ways of preparing it out there. It can also be pickled. We just purchased a new property and finally have found burdock. We cannot wait to try these recipes.

Interesting thread! I would consider burdock to be rather invasive around here. There's a gigantic stand of it in the field across the fence. Had no idea it was good for anything

Just realize that you can't expect the "greatness" of Japanese varieties in the wild. It would be like comparing wild marihuana (hemp) with the vastly improved types grown for their THC content nowadays.

.. or almost any modern crop to its ancestors with much smaller and less yummy good parts.