Raise your hand if you have mint growing in unwanted areas of your yard. I can raise both my hands very high to that one. I've gotten rid of a lot of it and my roses are now mint free, so I thought I'd share some of the methods I've used to get rid of the very useful and good smelling weed. Before we talk about getting rid of it, lets talk about controlling it.
control
The surest way to make sure you don't have mint in unwanted areas of your yard is to make sure that it is always in a controlled area. Use a pot of some sort and keep it above ground is a good method. Some people will bury a put underground. This will help keep it from freezing in winter, but mint is so hardy, I'm not sure that it is needed.
I plant mine in tires. Yes, I know I have plenty of mint all over the yard. It was here when I moved in. I don't want it in most of the places it resides, but I do have two plants that I want to keep: one spearmint and one lemon balm. Those two plants I don't want to go crazy and take over my yard, like the ones I've been removing, so I planted them in an old tire.
- Take an old tire and cut out one of the side walls.
- Lay it down with the cutout side up.
- Place some plastic sheeting in what is now the bottom of the tire.
- Place the cutout sidewall on top of the sheeting.
- Fill with potting soil.
- Plant
With this method, the roots can't easily get out of the tire, they grow too shallow to go under the plastic, but just in case, the plastic is there and held in place between the sidewalls and the dirt is holding it down as well. If the roots threaten to go over the tire, just trim them back. Be sure to water your tire regularly as all potted plants drain more freely and have less soil to get the water from. You should also mulch it to keep down evaporation. I also use this method with my sunchoke, except I use semi-truck tires.
removal
Ok. You didn't know better and you planted some mint in you flower beds. Or you just moved into a place and the former owners/tenants planted mint and it went wild. You now have mint everywhere. Time to get out the napalm, right? Hold on, before you get out the big guns,we can try to get rid of it with just a little bit of work.
Mint has shallow fiberous roots, so you don't have to dig very deep to get it. The problem is, since it is so fiberous, you miss some. The mint will grow back from those little bits of root you missed. So here is the method of digging that I found worked best. This works for many other weeds too. It requires a bit of sweat and some time, but it does work well.
- Dig: Dig up what you can. You should get as much of the root as you can, but you don't have to go crazy. Just dig up the chunk, shake off the dirt, toss it in you curbside refuse bin (you don't want it in your compost). I just push the spade at a shallow angle under the clump and pull it up as I go.
- Mulch: Around my roses I used a fabric barriar and then bark mulch. I did not dig up the mint as well here as I did in areas where I did not use the fabric. If you don't use the fabric, put down a good 3 inches of mulch. The mulch will choke out a lot of the little bits before they can make it to the light. It will also make it so that those that make it up have such loose mulch around their roots that they pull up very easily.
- Weed regulary: Go out once every week or two and pull up anything you see that does not belong. With the mulch layer, you will get up a lot, very quickly. Not a whole lot will have made it to the surface, the rest will come up so easily you will wonder why you would garden without a think mulch layer.
- Take it in stages: If your yard is like mine, mint in every corner (and vetch and blackberry and...) then you should take it in stages. I have three rose beds, so I started with the smallest. I got that under control, saw that it worked really well, so I continued to the other two. I also have gotten just the mint and vetch in a couple of areas, letting the other weeds take over, as I just can't get to everything yet. Now, I'm working on my azaleas and bulbs. Next I'll work on where my fruit buses are. Most of the mint is gone from these two areas, and I am working on the vetch. I hope to have them both under control by the end of summer.
I know it sounds like a lot, but I had a large area that I just dug up, never mulched, and don't weed. I have lots of other weeds, but don't get much mint in that area. So, if you take the effort to dig up a clump, get it out of your yard and you might be free of mint in that section for a while. Besides, digging is good exersize!
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