Moving mint

[bbird]

Yeah, yeah, I know you should contain mint, but those cute little plants that I started with looked so innocent that I was sure I could control them spaced out in my herb garden.

So, now I am at the point that I can't see all my other herbs and I only see mint. Tall mint at least 3 feet tall! I am going to remove it from the herb garden. I take it that I can not kill it so it's okay to move right now? or do you think I should just cut it all down and wait?

On a side note my heather is blooming! My fennel is gorgeous, and my lemon balm finally started growing. My chives are buried under the mint, and lost some of it's strong onion flavor but I am hoping that it will perk up once it actually see's sunlight when I get the mint out of there, lol.

Oh I know this isn't a herb, but does anyone have bugleweed? It's a ground cover and when I bought them they were such delicate little things, only half survived and I had no hope that they would be tough enough as ground cover. Woohoo, to my surprise this year they are spreading, and such tough stuff. They grow these stocks that stick up with the prettiest blue/purple flowers. I have it growing by the pond and they grow between the rocks. So pretty!

[Deleted]

Bbird, the mint propagates by underground runners, so even if you dig it up to move it, you'll leave some of those runners and they'll send up new plants. By trying to move it, you'll be doubling it. I'm sorry to say, that mint is in your garden for good.

You can CONTROL it by mowing it or cutting it right down to the ground. It won't die, it will keep coming back, but if you're diligent about keeping it cut, at least it won't shade out all your other herbs and plants.

I know, you can only use so much mint. My spearmint at my last place (which WAS contained, by the way), completely filled the area where it was and my drying racks were constantly full of spearmint. After I stashed enough for me to use (I still have some of that, too!) and gave away all I could to the neighbors, I started throwing it on the compost pile. It broke my heart to do it, but I just had too much.

Also, what kind of mint do you have? The reason I ask is that if it's peppermint, it won't reseed itself (peppermint is sterile), but if it's spearmint, the seeds will be viable and the seedlings will be of questionable quality. That's one thing I had to be very careful about when I had all that spearmint. I absolutely HAD to cut it down as soon as it started flowering each time, or I would have polluted my crop. Just something else to consider...

Hope this helped a little and didn't depress you too much.

~Lannie

[bbird]

Well Lannie, I was hoping no one would ask about what kind of mint I had. You see, when I put it in I didn't know a blasted thing about it and I put spearmint and chocolate mint about 5 feet across from each other. So now I have spearolate mint, lol.

My herb garden is on a mound of dirt that borders my little pond in the yard. I was thinking about removing all the mound dirt, but that seems like so much work, and knowing the mint I probably still wouldn't rid the area of it. As it is now, I can keep it contained on the mound without it invading my yard. I will try and cut it all down. If I can keep the growth down I would be happy. I just let it go crazy this year because the darn stuff would grow over night, lol.

Thanks Lannie!

[Deleted]

"Spearolate!"

Watch the flowers on the spearmint, though. I had some chocolate mint last summer, but our winter killed it, so I don't know what color its flowers are. Oh, well, it doesn't matter, they have different LEAVES so you can tell which ones are which.

Sounds like just keeping it cut will do for you. And even if (I should say "when") it gets into the yard, you can just mow it along with the grass, and enjoy the smell!

I have to tell you a funny mint story. Yesterday Rich and I went to town for our monthly shopping trip, and while we were there I stopped at a garden center and two nurseries, looking for spearmint. I'm almost out of my stuff that I brought with me dried when we moved here. Anyway, the garden center didn't have any and the first nursery was out of stock. When I went to the second nursery (an upscale place called The Plantsmythe), they said they had some. Great, I thought, take me to it! Now, you should know that this particular nursery is one of those snobbish ones - they know everything about every kind of plant, and they have just about everything there, herbwise, plus they're VERY expensive. So this woman trots me out to one of the greenhouses and shows me a bunch of little seedling pots with teeny-tiny little seedlings in them. Some were marked Peppermint and some were marked Spearmint (they were identical in appearance).

My first question was "You started this spearmint from SEED??" She proudly replied "Yes!" I asked her if she was aware that spearmint from seed had a foul odor and taste. She said no, she wasn't. I told her I didn't want spearmint from seed, and the only good spearmint was from cuttings. Then I saw the ones marked "Peppermint" and asked her if she was further aware that it was impossible to start peppermint from seed because it's a hybrid and it's sterile. She was looking decidedly confused by now, and replied that she didn't know that. I then remarked how amazingly similar all the seedlings looked to each other and that her peppermint was most likely the fouled spearmint. She just stood there, not knowing what to say, and I left. Suffice to say, I probably won't be going there much in the future.

~Lannie

[bbird]

What do I bet she left the mints to sell even after you educated her.

[Deleted]

Of COURSE she did! After all, she went to the trouble of planting and nurturing those little seeds! She just doesn't have a clue what they are! LOL!

(I'll bet money she got those "peppermint" seeds from a little packet at Wal-Mart! I've seen those, and I still don't know what they're supposed to be.)

~Lannie