In Remembrance of the Mint Bed

15 years ago

So yeah... When we moved in here almost two years ago we were blessed with this huge flowerbed in the back yard that is about 70ft long and 40ft wide in some areas. The narrower leg of the bed was planted with a mass of tall sunflower stalks baring millions of little yellow flowers about the size of a silver dollar. Along the edge of that side was a border consisting of lush chunks of spearmint. It was absolutely beautiful... at the time. We conducted our business in September and were moved in by the middle of October. The mint was looking a little scraggly but the sunflowers lasted well into December. Of course everything died back in the winter and I just left it all there. I love planting things but I haven't found a way to enjoy cleaning up the mess when the season is over. Once things start dying back I start getting SAD (I'll bet those clever psychologists had fun naming that one)and I can barely bring myself to go out into the yard much less participate in demolishing random areas of it.

Anyway, to prevent making a short story from becoming any longer as I can most assuredly make it I'll get to the point. I am a procrastinator. I let that bed do what it was going to do until the spring, pulled up the stalks and left it. My rationale behind that was.."well, I don't know what I am going to put there anyway so might as well let what grows there grow rather than have an empty spot in the flower bed.". And so it did grow...and grow... and grow some more. And then it seeded.

By this spring the bed looked like this:

So my idea was.. ok..I'll mow it, pull up the plants and till it and then I can plant. Ha..Ha...on me. It took maybe two weeks and the photo above is the actual photo of the bed after I mowed it. Yes, I procrastinated yet again.

Well after a year and some months of struggling with the mint I was way beyond the type of frustration that causes one to MOW and entire flower bed. I called in the troops.

That bed is apparently a good deal bigger than it looks. It took us two entire days to pull up every single plant in that bed. We transplanted the sunflowers and threw the mint into a huge pile. At this point any value that plant may have had was overshadowed by my need to take revenge and take my bed back. I allowed them to dry to a crunchy black crisp in full sun during the heat wave. It was great.

So after two days of pulling mint we spent another two days pulling roots. During this event we were not so pleased to find another obstacle in our plan. Gravel? And not just a little bit.

Apparently when they graded the area beside the garage there was gravel laid down previously. And that dirt got carried over into the yard and that is what the flowerbed was made of.

So... two weeks later after tilling this rock solid dirt and removing any semblance of mint root or gravel:

TA..DA.. yes we finally got it cleaned out.

We still didn't have a real plan for the area so we decided that in order to keep the ground nice and pliable until next year we would plant...

...Our veggie garden in that spot. No it isn't exactly the most beautiful thing in the world and in my opinion not as pretty as the mint bed was but I am so glad to be at least a little closer to my goal... which is to prevent yard domination by the mint. The veggies don't seem to mind the temporary situation either:

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Comments (8)

ncgardengirl
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Ur plants are beautiful...Mine don't look like that,,,nope nope nope...is that basil I spy??? hummm???
Yeap, i screwed up once an planted mint to...I pulled it out every year for many year, it sends out under ground runners to EVERYWHERE, and it was coming up far beyond where it was original planted...it was STILL coming up when we moved.
Ya'll did a wonderful job on that bed!
:) Fran
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dottie_in_charlotte
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Aezarian..wow..what a labor you all did. The veggie garden looks terrific.
Now..just a suggestion.
Get yourself a wide edging strip, wide enough to bury at least 8" down and leave 3" above ground..the purpose being to avoid having to consult a special gardener's dictionary for cusswords specific to bermuda grass invading garden beds.

Did you install drip irrigation into the bed? That would be a good project for winter time if you haven't done it yet.
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aezarien
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Fran - Admittedly I do think those are the biggest most beautiful basil plants I have ever grown. They were little scraggly things when I put them in the ground and they just exploded. It wasn't anything I did to them though. I just put them in the ground with a little miracle grow shake and feed and they did the rest. And yeah.. after all that work, almost sifting the dirt at that, I still have mint coming up. There isn't much though and I have learned my lesson. I am very diligent about pulling roots when I see mint. Now that the ground is a little softer it is not such a job.

Dottie - Digging that trench is an excellent idea and is on my to-do list for when the temperatures drop a little. I'm pretty sure that I have said words that would make the author of that dictionary blush while I was pulling grass out of the bed the first time around. We didn't install the drip irrigation yet but had planned to eventually. We sort of blew our "yard" budget for the year. We have begun the project by having someone come check out our non-functional well. It has water and everything is functional. The main pipe just broke at the bottom so we are looking at around $600 to get it working. That will be occurring some time this week. We are probably looking at next year for the irrigation system but it is on that to-do list.

-Tina
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aezarien
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I need to check my reading comprehension skills lately. I had what John said about digging the trench and filling it with mulch in my mind and misunderstood what you were saying.
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ncgardengirl
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Tina,
We need to talk...lol.
Did you email me yet? I haven't check yet, but I will later, supper time now.
bermuda grass, I hate it, it is the worstest stuff ever. It is coming up all over the place here. We put in raised beds and I told other half we needed to KILL it first... but no-one ever listens to me. NOW I pull some everyday. I am hoping if I pull it out enough it will strave to death at some point.

Good luck with the mint. It is a pain to, my mama told me not to plant it,,,but WHO listens to there mother?

Gotta go cook, oh what fun in 90 something degree weather with NO A/C.... I'm going to cook while the food is cooking! Oh geeze....

Do email me dear,,,,

:) Fran
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aezarien
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Check your email.. if it hasn't come yet I probably need to send again...
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coorscat
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
That basil has my mouth watering. It is some of the prettiest I have ever seen. I love mint, but I made the mistake of planting it once in Texas and I will never do that again. I certainly didn't go through everything you do to get rid of it.....I just moved!
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aezarien
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Thank You! It's about time for it to start making some seed.

Before this year I always grew my basil in pots because I was going to move it into the greenhouse for the winter but never did. I had given one of the pots of seedlings to my neighbor at the beginning of the season and she just threw it in the ground with her veggies. Ya know.. I know this is horrible that I thought this but honestly.. I didn't think it was going to live. I came back a few weeks later and the plant was HUGE and just as beautiful as it could be. Needless to say, mine went in the ground shortly after.
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In Remembrance of the Mint Bed

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In Remembrance of the Mint Bed

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