See also: Alder and willow
I have a patch of raspberries that’s been slowly traveling around my house for the last ten years.
You should make a pi
“Hey guys my new mint plant is growing well in the ground”
“That’s cool I use arch btw”
NGL, I’d rather have a lawn of mint than of grass.
I used to have that. Pretty sure our neighbor planted it to try and sabotage us because our yard was a mess. Fuck you Jerry. On the rare occasion that I’d mow, it smelled amazing
I ended up getting rid of my garden this year, planted clover,grass and wildflowers. But along the fence line, I just planted potatoes. So it’s potato surrounded by grass and clover.
I really don’t know what you’re all getting into a tizz about?! Grows just fine for me ;)
Now make tea with it
Indeed I do every now and then!
I have no idea what I’m doing
I don’t understand why people act like having a lawn of mint is worse than grass. Seems like it requires less maintenance.
Grass lawns started off as a way for pretentious rich people to flaunt how much of their land they could waste on nothing important, so it’s really not worse at all. Just another dumb trend that caught on.
I planted mint in my yard for this exact reason. I hate grass lawns. However local flowers are probably better for local pollinator and bird populations, so I might add those too.
please do! native flora are super important, especially since large monocultures of a useless crop (grass) have become popular. if your yard is gonna be filled with plants that you aren’t using, you might as well fill it with plants that are useful to the environment
The other day walking in the woods I saw what I assume is native grass, it looked like lawn grass so I’m tempted to experiment.
More shade for flees and tics
Well they’re not dead so you’re already doing better than me.
Yet.
They’re not dead yet.
You are closed in on three sides. This is a good spot for mint. I recommend putting 30cm/1ft of woodchips/mulch as a barrier to keep it all in.
I can tell you that 30cm of woodchip will do sod all to stop it. My mint grows under 50cm of concrete. It takes a couple of years to get there, but it does!
Haha! That’s such a stupid thing to do. That’s why I’ve only planted a blackberry in my garden.
Demonic thing to say 😭
Wait…
Hahaha. You poor soul.
It’s ALMOST worth it for fresh Blackberries that actually taste like blackberries. Not that trash in the grocery store.
Do those get replicated or something? Crafted from foam, glue and paint?
They get picked before they’re ripe, which means their flavor isn’t very good.
Wait, do blackberries also grow like weeds? I’ve never had much interest in gardening, but like the one plant I’d genuinely like to have, due to loving the fruit, would be blackberry
Blackberry is evil.
If it is not native to your country don’t plant it! Nothing eats it, grows extremely quickly and is very hard to get rid of.
If I ever did get one, I’d probably want to grow it indoors anyway, if that’s even possible. I’m more a city person and dont especially desire living somewhere with lawn space to maintain
Sounds like you’d be interested in hydroponics.
I mean tell that to all the birds eating my blackberries.
They are spreading seeds… That is the point of the berries.
Nothing eats the plant.
Even goats, which famously will eat blackberry, will eat anything else first.
Rubus Ursinus (Pacific blackberry) and Allegheniensis and a few others are native to the US. They’re still prickly but not evil, we have some in the backyard and the turkeys love them.
I’m in NZ, of there is a naive blackberry, I’ve never heard of it. But we have a lot of blackberry in this country, it all sucks.
Blackberries grow in thick brambles with nasty thorns. It also has a hardy root system that allows it to regrow if you just cut it down. They also spread a few feet per year, so keeping them contained is a constant (and often painful) battle. If you go too long without paying attention to it, your entire yard will be a mess of thorny brambles that are nearly impossible to kill.
or you can put them on wires like grapes. idk if it’s unusual luck or skill issue, but my blackberries get stem rust every couple of years and they have to be cut down, they do grow back from roots but it keeps them from spreading too far
They grow as brambles and grow thick.
It will take up any and all space it can.
You won’t have to worry about kids playing in your yard, but they’ll be in it for berries
Make sure to try to find a thornless variety. Blackberry thorns will wreak havoc on your body and your clothes
The bramble types do. They’ll spread out a few feet every year and new plants will pop up everywhere. They’re hard to prune because of the nasty thorns, and as long as there’s roots, they’ll grow back.
You can get a thornless variety that’s much easier to contain. I have one in my front yard that hasn’t spread at all.
Extremely hardy, hard to kill, and spiders love them. But the fruit is delicious!
Well, good news!
You’ll certainly have a lot of blackberries if you plant them.
The bushes down near the river by me are about 20 feet thick and 8 feet high. The only other thing growing near them are nettles. It’s a genuinely fearsome plant.
Are you in the US? There are a couple of native blackberries that don’t grow in brambles, but they are still quite pokey. This one basically grows as a couple of arching canes, usually on a tree line with a few others.
Interesting, I didn’t realize there was more than one species, I had always figured that one blackberry population had been domesticated at some point and then bred into the different varieties out there
yes, and they have sharp thorns, makes removal them very difficult. apparently is the himlayin blackberry is the notirous hard to kill weed.
the himalyin blackberry is capable of regenerating from root fragments, even if you pull out the whole plant, a small part of it can regenerate.
They are evil incarnate
Oh no, I planted Bamboo trees to avoid issues
“A species of bamboo”
Throw some blueberry, strawberry plants in there too
Personally I love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolvulus_arvensis, it’s flowers are so cute! The neighborhood is blooming!
We just bought a house last year and now are currently dealing with a garden full of bindweed and creeping bellflower. It’s fairly daunting but also kind of addicting trying to dig it all up.
addicted to the war game
[Sabaton]
I planted a blackberry plant 2 years ago, and it’s grown maybe a couple inches since I planted it. I’m annoyed - I wanted blackberries! The raspberries took off, so that’s nice. I just planted them all in the yard so I can mow down any that grow where I won’t want them.
Bamboo looks way better than blackberry, I made sure to plant a ton of it in various parts of my yard.
The funny part is that clumping bamboo actually makes a great privacy hedge. It’s leafy, grows in thick bunches, very quickly hits like 10-20 feet tall (depending on the variety), and doesn’t rapidly spread. So it can be a great option for people looking for a perimeter hedge or property divider.
The tricky part is that most bamboo isn’t clumping. Most is running bamboo, which rapidly spreads, doesn’t grow very tall, and will break past basically every barrier (like sidewalks and landscaping stonework) that most other plants would be stopped by. It’s also extremely difficult to kill, because it stores nutrients in the (extremely wide) root system. So even if you cut it down, it’ll just grow right back again somewhere else.
And plenty of people have accidentally planted running bamboo, thinking it was clumping bamboo.
fun fact: if you plant oragano next to mint, it will take on a minty flavor.
the tomato mozarella salad I made was… interesting
That’s so cool
Crystal cool - Holly
Peppers and tomatoes can do this too. I used to grow tomatoes and habaneros in the same raised garden bed, and the tomatoes always came out with quite the kick
A similar thing happens with fennel and dill. The result is something that tastes like a weaker mix of both and the fennel doesn’t grow a bulb.
Define close please. Also mint please I got a nice lemon balm patch right next to some Greek oregano I bought because why not. The rest of my oregano lives in the bee alley.
Touching distance, basically
Oh whew. We have a pepper patch between the experimental greek oregano and the lemon balm disaster
I’ll plant it next to my invasive english ivy and see which one wins…
Let me get in on this. The previous owner of my home planted Garlic. There’s no grass in that corner of my yard now. Just garlic. It escaped the garden bed.
You make that sound like it’s a bad thing and not, in fact, free garlic.
The garlic is great! The odor is not as great.
Ah, yeah, I could imagine it gets pretty pungent.
I’ve got privit, onion weed, rust weed and bamboo all fighting it out in gladiatoral combat
And winners reward will be acid ans fire followed by a salting of the earth after which the soil will be evacuated to the clay level before it is dumped in my neighbours yard (where all of these fuckers came from
Don’t forget the Lilly of the vally, 3 way cage match ( or uncaged in this case )
Thank you for acknowledging my pain
If you’re in America throw some kudzu in there for some extra spice
I have a mint plant in my house, in a pot, that I simply cannot seem keep alive. It has a single stem left that’s trying its hardest to die every moment. I’ve taken it as a personal challenge to nurse it back to health (I need an easy win these days)
Last time I mowed, I noticed a new weed in the yard, popping up all over; this one smelled different, pleasant even. Fuck me, I’ve got a yard full of mint that showed up on its own, I’m guessing to mock my black thumb.
If you bought a supermarket pot you need to separate it and put it into a bigger pot. Otherwise it will cannibalise itself.
In fairness, if I were made of mint, I would also cannibalise myself.
Already done. It was actually a freebie supermarket plant my son picked up. The local store has a section where the ugly and dying plants are free. So we picked up a chocolate mint, and are trying to bring it back to life.
I had it nearly there, so I gently moved it to a bigger pot, with fresh new soil, and it promptly died. There was one single stem that was left that had gotten buried when I replanted it. Everything behind it died, but it must be trying to put some roots down at a buried node or something. It was floppy and I thought dead, but then decided to come back to life and is growing new leaves. Fingers crossed, I’m too afraid to touch them t right now, so I’m just keeping it watered and sunny and hoping it comes back.
I can always go get some from the yard :).
I have chocolate mint and I find its not as hardy as other varieties.
It does really well with fairly wet and shady conditions (I had it under my elevated rain barrels and it did great, but didn’t spread beyond that) and poorly otherwise (since moving the rain barrels and exposing it to constant sun, it doesn’t want to grow much at all, much less spread).
Idk how much that’ll help your quest, but perhaps it will :)
Explain yourself right this instant young man!
Unless all you want to harvest is mint, it’s not a good idea to plant mint in the ground. It takes over the whole field.
I was promised this when I planted mint in ground at my old house, and sure enough, the mint took hold. Alas, my insatiable appetite for mojitos was too much demand for the mint to sustain and I eradiacted it through overharvesting.
I have also experienced this tragedy. But not before discovering that a little catnip gives mojitos a nice flavor
Since I do not enjoy being randomly attacked, I don’t mess with their stash.
weeds hate this one trick
Wow this grows really well!
…
Okay, I’m going to trim this back now.
…
How the hell did the mint get over there
would be the best smelling field tho
No joke we have a few pots of different mints growing by the trash cans for any unpleasant odors
Oooh. I knew this but for some reason my brain went from “Th ground? Like soil?” to “if I’m not supposed to grow it in a pot of soil, am I meant to grow it on some sort of trellis setup?”
That’s why I only plant horseradish!
Mint grows as hard as grass and weeds. Once you plant mint all you have is more mint
Mint grows better than grass, as it’s well suited for the environments most people try to grow grass. Which are environments not well suited for it.
Well I copied the yard we already had, but I let the mint run wild. Also I think the racing stripes I added here and here look pretty sharp.
Oooohhh noooo, not mint!! How can I ever live with a yard of short, lush, green, plants that smell nice when I cut them, keep pests away, and give me an endless supply of ingredients for drinks and desserts? It’s going to cover up all my regular grass that I can’t do shit with and benefits no one!
It’s going to cover up all my regular grass that I can’t do shit with and benefits no one!
If it only replaced regular grass, it would be fine. Problem is, it’ll choke everything in its path, including parsley and roses aaand I hope you won’t miss that chamomile patch, because it’s now mint.
I’m thinking I let some clover run wild because the hoa board will shit their non-hoa approved shit receptacles.
Roses suck. Also, no.
So I’m. Gardener who doesn’t know. What is it that i should know?
Mint is extremely hardy, isn’t picky about soil type, spreads quickly, strangles and overtakes whatever is growing with it, and reproduces from the roots. If mint ever goes into the ground, your entire yard will very quickly be overtaken by it even if you start ripping it out as soon as you see it. It’s basically an invasive weed that happens to taste good. Anyone who intends to grow it will keep it in above-ground pots instead. But even then, all it takes is a small sprig landing in the grass, and suddenly your entire lawn is starting to smell minty when you mow.
My grandma’s garden got a mint infestation, and I simply rip some up and make fresh mint tea whenever I visit :)
It’s really really, good
Well I know what to do if my gardener buddy ever pisses me off
Toss Dandelion’s in there too. Also very hardy, spreads well, almost entirely edible.
Only in cold/temperate climates, try planting mint in a tropical climate and the thing will just die for whatever reason. I used to have a planter with it, then I moved it a bit, to a spot where there was less shade, and the thing died in days.
I had a potted mint in my parents backyard years ago. It grew through the bottom of the pot and started to invade the flower bed. Since then, my parents have drowned the entire bed in weed killer, pulled up everything they could find by the roots, and then put down a tarp and bark chips. Every year, some more mint pops up through all that.
Not a gardener, but I’ve heard people say it grows like a weed and we should plant some on mars
If it likes your climate it’ll spread fast and be hard to keep in check because it spreads underground
I seem to have the same problem with wild strawberries
Sound like you need to plant some mint and spend the summer enjoying all you can drink strawberry mojitos.
i’m now thinking I should infest one of the drainage areas a bit away from my house with blackberries, wild strawberries and mint and just go farm it over there.
The Legend of Johnny Mojitoseed.
I want to go to there
Trade you wild blackberries
We have minimal grass in our backyard. Whoever owned the property before us loved mint lol
This bamboo grove is really taking off!
This is a sadness for me, because I really want bamboo I’m my garden, but am hesitant to go through with it for obvious reasons. Almost all the plants I love grow like weeds to the point of it no longer being charming 😭
We planted native honeysuckle as a hedge instead. They grow like weeds too, but at least they will smell nice all the way through summer and autumn, so eh.
See also horseradish, amaranth, native sunflowers, and in my case, tomatoes.
Planted once, 10 yrs later still finding them in every nook and cranny of the neighborhood.
I think most people would be happy with your luck with tomatoes
I got a weird twist of that: the cherry tomato plants were spreading like crazy, but the tomato fruits couldn’t be eaten because they were all full of worms. (I think they were fruit fly larvae, not sure. Not a single one was fine.)
True, but I credit the environs being just right Enough sun, not too much moisture, decent soil, and also the specific variety. Probably a bunch of tomatoes I wouldn’t be able to grow.
Don’t forget about green onions.
Its not a weed if its useful. It may just be a little “unwanted at the moment”.
My 96 year old neighbor always tells me," a weed is just flower growing somewhere you didn’t want it. "
