IT'S TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD

[deird1]

I am more and more convinced that, long ago, a frustrated gardener got SO sick of dealing with this weed that persisted in taking over his veggie garden no matter what he did, that one day he heaved an exasperated sigh, threw his shovel on the ground, and said, "Right. From now on, it's not a weed. It's a food. Hear that, lads? If any of the toffs ask, we meant to grow it, we want to grow it, and it's so delicious that we're going to use this entire area just to grow it. We'll move the rest of the veg somewhere else. Got that?"

And the name of this plant was... mint.



I have been determinedly eradicating the mint from my garden for a few weeks now. I pulled out every bit of it I could find, but every few days these tiny shoots of mint peep their little heads out of the soil – and when I pull them out, they come attached to ENORMOUS FRELLING ROOTS that span half the garden bed. Today I pulled out a root as long as my arm.

It's an evil plant of spreading doom, I tell you!

Comments

[slaymesoftly]

LOL It is surprisingly prolific and tough. Smells good though. :)

[a2zmom]

Did you plant it or was it already there?

And yes, that's a plant I would never, ever put into the ground. There's a few that I avoid at all costs, no matter how pretty.

THerea site called davesgarden.com which basically has comments on every plant and cultivar out there by fellow gardeners. I don't plant anything without checking there first.

[deird1]

My housemate planted it - mainly to get rid of a lot of grass and weeds, which, in fairness, it did. It just then developed ambitions of taking over the entire garden. :)

[velvetwhip]

EEEEEK!!!!!


Gabrielle

[fenchurch]

Oh yeah... I grow mint, but I make sure to do it in a container, well away from the rest of the garden! The other one to be wary of is oregano. That stuff will spread everywhere and will keep popping up for years.

[vass]

Uh-oh. I bought a mint seedling just a few days ago. It's in a container, though.

Oddly, my Plant That Would Not Die is chives. I got one of those round gift containers of mixed herbs for my birthday last year, it had basil and parsley and chives. The basil lasted way longer than it reasonably should have, but eventually died off. Then the parsley. I even managed to kill off my rosemary plant through neglect - it was in a pot next to the thing of herbs, and when I took the dead thing out to reuse the pot, I found that it was rootbound like OMG. The chives... they're still alive. I don't even like chives.

[frayadjacent]

Ooh, yes, I've heard that. I've never actually had to deal with mint as a weed, but when I bought some for my garden I was cautioned to keep it in a pot. I'm glad I did!

[petzipellepingo]

Yeah, it'll do that. Good luck trying to remove it.

[beroli]

The best definition of a weed that I've heard is "something that grows where it's not wanted."

Although your mint sounds more like an old-school vampire, cackling, "YOU INVITED ME IN!"

[zeborah]

I thought you were going to say dandelions for a bit there. (Someone told me you could eat the leaves in a salad. I tried and begged to differ. Then they told me you had to do this that and the other and I decided that defeats the entire purpose of eating a weed, to wit that there should be no effort involved in their cultivation.)

I have the same long-root woes with convulvulus. And clover (which I don't mind on the lawn, just in the flowerbeds and paths) and ivy and a certain evil grass and the plum tree which does at least give me fantastic plums but I don't really want to deal with its offshoots on the other side of the garden. But convulvulus is the worst, there's something about those roots that makes me shudder.

[megpie71]

Mint was originally a bog plant, which means it can't be drowned, and it doesn't get killed by drought. Other things I've found don't kill mint include 0C frosts, 40C plus temperatures, hacking it back to ground level, and prolonged neglect. The best place to grow it is in a container - I bought a large, cheap, plastic tub, and a 30L bag of potting mix back in 2006 when we first moved back to Perth, and planted a single mint plant in the middle of the container. Three house moves, and a lot of neglect later, and it's still going strong. (My father-in-law recently fed it for the first time ever, and as a result it thinks it's Christmas. I'm getting a LOT of peppermint tea out of it).

Best policy for keeping mint from taking over the garden is not to let it in there in the first place. If it is in there, make sure you got all of the roots, because even the smallest part will re-sprout. Round-up painted onto each individual sprout (ala weeding wand) might work, or the wretched stuff might sit there and snigger at you before re-growing.

[dr_carrot]

Mojitos...that is all :)

[immer_am_lesen]

Bugger.
Best thing to do is use a pitchfork to try to loosen up and lift out as much of the rootage as you can without bits breaking off and leaving the rest behind.
Then, throw old carpet or wet newspaper/ black plastic/ stuff like that all over the ground where it's growing, and leave it. For a few months.

You can also try painting all the leaves you can see with undiluted Glyphosate. Evil stuff, but it even got rid of the everpresent ivy that was on our trees here. Took a few seasons, but it finally killed it.

Never give up, never surrender!! (that's to you, not the mint!)