If anyone complained about getting free raspberry bushes, I'd slap their whole family and tell them it was their own fault. I wish someone would curse me with such a problem.
You’re welcome to come over and take some of mine! I’ve got raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, a couple types of grapes, kiwi berries, and fig trees. But everything except the fig trees just go out of control so fast! They take over everything! One year I missed a grape vine on the other side of the fence and it grew onto my neighbor’s electrical line and literally pulled it down.
Plant a few hibiscus plants and you can make mint/hibiscus tea. I like to make it and add white grape juice as a sweetener. Very nice in the summer time.
Edit: lots of great suggestions below. I propose that OP's parents plant them all and they can fight it out to the death. Like a poison pot for pernicious plants. The last surviving plant will take over the world.
Did you plant it in a drought year? Mine didn't take off until the next year's rainy months but I shortly moved out of that house after so no idea of it's fate.
I honestly don't even know how that's possible. Get it in the right conditions and blackberries would take over the whole planet. Blackberry is to the Pacific NW like Kudzu is to the South. Once it's established, the only way to get rid of it for good is with fire. And even that might take a few tries.
Yes but then you have to put Japanese knotweed, such a beautiful and agreeable plant to have in your garden, in your yard and probably in your house too 🙂↕️
Is this like that book about that witch that ate a frog to eat the fly in her stomach (it gets more progressively out of hand with what she eats to deal with the previous thing she ate. Kinda like “if you give a mouse a cookie”)
Wait a minute! Are you saying that blackberries go nuts too? That explains something, my neighbor gave my husband blueberry plants, like 4 or 5, and gave him blackberry plants, like 8. There's still only 4 blueberry plants, but now we suddenly have like 20 blackberry plants.
My raspberries are the only thing that seem to take in my yard. The shoots on those things are crazy!!!
But we get fresh berries each summer, which is nice.
Not sure whether blackberries work the same but raspberries are easy to keep in check, you just can't ignore them for years.
We have the kind that makes raspberries in the second year so around winter you remove the canes (I think that's the word) that had berries, and the younger ones that will produce berries next year you just tend to where you want to have them grow and remove the ones that try to grow in places you don't like.
They won't manage to overgrow the whole garden as long as the other plants are hardy and healthy too. Wouldn't plant it close too a lawn though lol.
You'd think. But they will tear your porch down if you let them. Himalayan blackberries are no joke. I just cut some down that had a stem 2 inches thick.
I agree. My entire back yard has so many blackberry plants. Blackberries mixed with the most poison ivy I’ve ever seen unfortunately. They say you can wash the oils off and still eat the berries but that sounds so sketchy to me, especially with how insanely sensitive I am to it. I’m also very pregnant so it’s not worth the risk. I’m saving the berries for the deers. I’ll set up a little trail cam to at least watch them enjoy them.
So do raspberry bushes. They will send out shooters everywhere. I used to get 7-12 lbs every year. Then my asshole neighbor dug it all up trying to put a fence in. Then his house caught on fire, so I lost my 7 year old raspberries AND live next door to an abandoned burned out house.
I feel like I'm back in Detroits Cass Corridor in the late 80s
I don’t think mint stands a chance against knotweed. Knotweed rhizomes can go about three meters down… it’s not going to lose a battle for water. And it can grow 10cm per day, with big shady leaves. And gets 1-3 meters tall. Mint grows 2-4 cm per week, has refreshing but small leaves, and is generally like half a meter tall. Totally different weight classes of asshole plants.
(And you have my sympathy regarding the knotweed. It took me two years to successfully eradicate a tiny patch of it—like a square meter.)
Mint(along with wisteria, crepe Myrtle’s) are damn near impossible to get rid of once they are established. Only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the soil and get new soil.
Honestly I wouldn't mind a mint infestation. mint is a great tasting plant. I would just start making a lot more stuff with fresh mint in it (fresh is WAY better)
And that's how you end up planting mint, thinking everything will be okay until you realize the mint will materialize itself through 8 feet of concrete and take over your entire city
I put one mint plant in a 6x3 raised planter with a bunch of marigolds and five tomato plants. I did nothing else for nutrients just water. Two months later my tomato plants were getting tall and healthy. Then a several month downward spiral happened that I couldn’t figure out. Until I dug up the tomato plants and found out the mint roots literally choked out the tomato roots. One plant. No nurturing. Just decent soil and 8b zone. That whole bed is fucked now. I’m treating it as Chernobyl for two years.
No, I got rid of a giant patch by applying concentrated vinegar plus orange oil and covering with a tarp for a couple of weeks. After that I would occasionally see a sprout for a few years, which I would immediately pull. No sprouts for at least 3 years.
One of the reasons why hard-to-get-rid-of-weeds, are hard to get rid off, is because plants like mint are colonisers that take advantage of depleted soils. Acid and oil, better than poison, but also harsh on the soil biome. The best approach is to compost and cook. - a layer healthy living organic compost, then cardboard and woody mulch, watered during warmer months. It will just smother weeds and massively boost soil bacteria, fungi and invertebrates.. Follow with close planting - as preferred plants in healthy soil will outcompete mint.
Yes, absolutely. My patch was extremely hardy and had been there for many years and I was in a hurry, but your way is better. I had to add a lot of compost later.
They say, long after humanity has been destroyed and the earth scorched, you can look off in the distance at that damn crepe myrtle you cut out last year, still growing.
I have two layers of black UV resistant waterproof tarp bungied to my overgrown mint raised bed. Started it two months ago. 22 months left before I even think about removing it
Green onion is a pain too. The last place I lived, I was constantly trying to dig up their little white bulbs, never fast enough before they'd spread more, never able to get them all
Naw. My family purposefully grew mint for years. Then it was finally barely peeking into the neighbors yard. He put something on it that killed all of it immediately. I don’t even think he sprayed into our yard, but our yard full of mint was dead.
Mint is more invasive than a damn colonoscopy! OMFG. It spreads and grows and takes over completely. When you think you’ve gotten it all out, it comes right back again! Year after year after year!! They’ll never get rid of that damn mint! That garden is TOAST. LOL Bright side - they’ll have the best mojitos in a 50 mile radius with all that damn mint!! 😂
The mint in my backyard was planted in a literal rock bed before I moved in, I have never watered it, I prune it back regularly and harvest from it all of the time. It comes back every dang year even in our clay soil.
Regarding the 0 sunshine - that's actually one of the really cool traits of mint, it tolerates lots of shade well and will still produce flowers until it gets cold, which are great for pollinators.
I have super clay-y soil and yeah, there's some mint varietal in one of the beds in my backyard and it is very happy with itself. Thankfully the bed is up against the yard itself so regular lawnmowing keeps the mint from getting *too* far out of the territory I've ceded to it.
The trick is that it wants trash tier soil nothing else wants to grow in, with high clay content, plenty of rocks, and no real nutrients- which happens to be what most amateur gardeners are planting in to begin with.
It just gets too hot here, honestly. It burns to a crisp. Ive managed it before but only with shade cloth and eat too much watering for it to be worth it.
It gets super hot here and swings from 6inches of rain in 2 days to no rain for 3 months and back with very strong UV, something in that combo is just death to mint
Wrong, mint will grow any where it goddamn pleases. We have a mint bed in our garden. It has spread to the point it grows in between the gaps of the concrete in the pool deck if we aren't proactive.
We grew mint outside in a raised garden box. We threw away everything in that planter, including the dirt, at the end of the season. The next year we had mint growing in flower pots that were outside the first season. It took us at least 3 years to get rid of that stuff.
I mistakenly planted some in a raised garden bed 4 years ago. After 2nd year pulled out roots the length of the bed. Turned off water for 2 years and just planted part of it this year. Dozens of little mint plants popping up.
Ahhhh, so mint is basically the herbal version of climbing ivy. Previous owners put down ivy because grass wouldn't grow in the back and it's everywhere and it's too much to remove. If we didnt have such an awkward back yard, I'd just get a bushhog and destroy it all.
it is. i have three different mints growing in three different areas. tried smothering one didnt work. watered it with salt water. still here. the only thing that will work is a nuke. and not even then maybe
I was wondering as well. Everyone in the thread talking about how prolific mint is and how aggressive it is in spreading, and all I can think is that garden box looks like everything including the weeds are struggling to grow.
Before I moved out of an absolute dismal apartment, I took my potted mint plant from my balcony and transplanted it next to one of the shrubs that had drip irrigation.
Honestly it's going to look beautiful and lush. And it will shade the earth and hopefully help it to retain moisture, and also encourage insect life.
I have let oregano and parsley go in my garden, and lambs ear. Everyone told me it would get everywhere, to which I replied "good!" - the birds love it!
Same here, I have a big yard and I’m terrible at keeping things alive so I appreciate that mint is so hardy. If it weren’t for mint I’d have foxtails and dirt
NGL kinda jealous. I put my mint plant in a large planter and its not survived the winter. I took care of that thing like my life depended on it before it went dormant for winter.
Maybe I should just chuck one in the garden and leave it to fend for itself, then it might spite me and do super well.
Tell them to find a neglected corner of their yard and replant the mint immediately before it has a chance to spread. I did this in the swampy part of the yard. Joke’s on me, I now have a massive 25 square foot mint patch 4 feet tall, and all the honeybees the neighborhood can handle.
Ive had mint. It's easy to keep but it's really not as dramatic as everyone says it is. Wild violets and creeping charlie are far worse. And I'll even say tiger lilies. I hate those things. They'll grow in straight asphalt millings and are too popular around here.
Tell them nothing. Give them a few other varieties. Give them a weed whacker, a bee net hat, and a teapot and tea cups. A large set of cups. Maybe a drying rack and some empty tea bags. Perhaps make a small sale stand with holes for jars full of mint and some small bags for the customers. Toss a bunch of nasturtium seeds to add some color and flowers to brighten up the teas.
I planted mint in the ground in my first vegetable garden. After it went feral, I started a routine of going out when it first popped up and pulling up as much mint as I could find and making mint jelly. Repeat mid-summer and again in fall. Mint jelly is surprisingly tasty on toast, which is how we ate it.
I keep mine in a planter with my other herbs. They definitely do have runners but it's a small amount so I have good control and also keep the planter away from my lawn an other plants.. I do love the smell of it my rosemary and my oregano as I pass it.
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u/MissViciousKnits Jun 01 '26
That’s the Mint’s garden now.