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Sunday, April 8. 2018Garden Cancers to avoidMints will invade everything. My Mom would just let it loose in a meadow. When the meadow was mowed, wow. Great smell. When you needed some for lemonade, it was out there. Same goes for beautiful flowering vines like Trumpet Vine and Wisteria. Their desires to spread and metastasize via underground roots are relentless and close to impossible to prevent. My advice is not to plant them anywhere they cannot be mowed around. Bamboo. Unless you have a good local Panda population, you will be sorry you even planted it. Agent Orange is one approach. What sorts of garden plants have you had difficulty controlling?
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Not true at all about bamboo. All you need to do is plant a clumping variety instead of a runner and its easy to keep in check. It's too beautiful to not have in your yard.
Agreed. Our neighbors have several clumps more than 10 years old, still clumping and confined. Very nice stuff. But do watch out for the spreading kind, which will eat the world.
All chump change compared to kudzu, which I live close enough to to feel threatened.
We have maybe a quarter acre patch of chocolate mint . Mama cuts and brides it into long, thick ropes . There's actually a market for it if you work the harvest .
WE have bamboo in pots with root block at bottom of pots.
possible to put them in ground, provided use root block designed for bamboo (not permeable) When we lived in England it seemed to us that if there was one house called "Wisteria Lodge", there must have been a thousand of them!
The first thing people would almost always say when we admired their wisteria boughs was: you have to be ruthless or they'll own the place. I deliberately planted a trumpet vine to attract hummngbirds. But I planted in a place that makes it very hard to spread, and I don't have to mow around it. It also provides a canopy for a pergola. Ten years in it's looking pretty good.
I made the mistake of planting a trumpet vine next to our deck and it is too low to get under to deal with weeds and such. Although I took out the trumpet vine, I have had to keep the deck covered with tarps now for 3-4 years due to the runners from the trumpet vine. Impossible to kill. They are beautiful for sure can be a real problem in the wrong place.
The back of my yard is a woody meadow and infested with ticks. I planted mint as a tick repellent. I also use cedar mulch. It is behind the lawn area and I rather have mint than ticks.
If your situation allows it, get some game fowl they will get rid of the ticks.
A lot of things will spread here in South Texas if they get a water supply (such as passion flower, coral vine, Tahitian squash (amazing production and spread, kind of like a butternut)). Not too many get out of hand once they're beyond the reach of a hose, one exception being dodder vine.
A little bamboo forest would be cool! Can pandas live in Northern Michigan?
Second the morning glory complaint. Not really going wild or anything, but I planted catnip in the garden, now it is coming up all over the place downwind from the original planting. Never knew it is a perennial. Neighborhood cats like me.
Lesser Celandine. Given to me as Marsh Marigold by a trained gardener who had no clue. Horrible, horrible stuff. Blooming like mad right now and all over the place.
Looked it up. Never knew it's name butthought it looked so pretty down in the creek beds when would drive by, then it started down by my creek, now it has about a third of my back yard. Trimec time.
This bugger has many names - Houttuynia cordata, also known as fish mint, fish leaf, lizard tail, chameleon plant, heart leaf, Ja mardoh, fish wort, or bishop's weed. Multiple applications of double strength Round Up Par III, etc - 3 weeks later it's back.
Jerusalem Artichoke. Planted it once, regretted it immediately. It was growing out of the wall. Took a few seasons of finding every tuber to eradicate.
Siberian elm. Hideously invasive across New Mexico. And it's a BIG fast-growing tree.
Obviously conditions are different here in the UK, but I'll second Cathy J's comment on Jerusalem Artichoke. We planted it in a vegetable garden and had to spend years eradicating it.
Much of the UK is covered with invasive rhododendrons-very beautiful but they do squeeze out native species badly. Japanese knotwood (Fallopia japonica, brought in as an ornamental) is a nightmare-it spreads everywhere and grows through 3ft of concrete. It won't be killed by just about anything. Glyphosate (Roundup) won't do it and neither will a flamethrower. For several years you couldn't get a mortgage on a property if Japanese Knotweed was present! Anemone. Aka Windflower in New England. Should be called Willflower. Has a will of its own.
I can't help myself. I had an heirloom variety of wisteria (that took over the backyard of an old former home) which I transplanted to my new home (where it has now taken over my front post light). The beauty and fragrance is worth the occasional trim. It blooms throughout the spring and summer.
Here in the high desert with 14" of annual rainfall, mint and trumpet vine are valuable and easily controlled hardy perennials. It's the myrtle spurge and tree of heaven that we have to worry about.
Hops. The only plant I've encountered that can compare with kudzu. They send out underground runners that go long distances, grow at a rate you can almost watch and come back stronger every year. The previous owners of our current home planted them along both fence lines. They must have really hated the neighbors.
Nandina ....someone planted it around this house and it never dies..
Lily of the Valley. It has taken over a three by ten foot area and keeps popping up wherever it can.
Yucca gets my vote. I moved into a house several years ago that had a stand of it by the front sidewalk. I sheared it, covered it, burned it, gasolined it, salted it, and drowned it in Round Up. It took three years but I thought I'd beaten it. Four years went by and I was gloriously yucca free. It came back last year.
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