We live in an apartment in a big Victorian mansion. The landlords live upstairs. We have a lovely vegetable garden in the back, and there is a big poorly-maintained flower garden along the side of the house. Most of the flower garden is weeds, and the summer’s been so hot and dry that it’s been drought-resistant weeds lately. (Note that when we moved in we offered to look after that garden too, if they would help us out with the costs of planting, and they said no.) But there is a huge, glorious patch of mint at one end that I have been using to season my water, tea, iced tea, salads, etc etc etc all summer. Yum.
Or, should I say, there was a huge, glorious patch of mint. Imagine my horror yesterday when I headed out for a sprig, and found the whole flower (weed) garden, mint and all, razed to stumps.
Oh, the ignorance of landlords. I have no words. I’m gutted. Devastated. I know, it wasn’t MY mint, but … but …
sigh Anyone know how long it takes mint to grow back from a brush-cut?
Further, anyone know how squash plants can be trained to reach out and strangle ignorant landlords?
I killed the mint I planted last summer. I have no idea how. I planted it in one of those half-barrrel things, since I knew it would spread and take over the world if I planted it in the ground.
This summer, I waited, and waited, and waited, and the mint never came back. I killed mint. I must be some sort of superhero.
Yeah, I’m with twickster. When we planted mint this year, our only concern was putting it in the most inhospitable spot we could find, in hopes of keeping it in check. Cutting it down will probably make it grow back faster and thicker than before.
I think squash plants strangle everything except landlords as a rule. And the mint will come back – they’re invasive, and in fact pretty hard to get rid of.
If you want some completely unsolicited advice, I’d recommend relocating the mint away from the building. A Victorian house will have shed a certain amount of lead paint over the years, and the concentrations of lead in the soil are bound to be highest right next to the foundation. Certain plants – and I’m not sure how mint is in this regard – will take up the lead from the soil.
Yes, I’m sure they would be sorry if I told them. Just like they were sorry that my derailleur somehow got bent when they moved my bike to re-tile the floor. And they’re sorry my bike then got stolen when they made me lock it up outside, against my wishes and protestations about living in the (alleged) bike theft capital of North America. And they’re sorry that my keyboard got busted when the roof leaked on it, after I asked them to come in and fix the leaky roof. (They were, however, surprisingly not sorry when my housemate got carbon monoxide poisoning from their amateur attempt at installing a gas system.)
Not that I’m bitter or anything. It’s just time to move, is all.
Yes, this is why I’m grateful they razed the mint and not, say, the tomatoes. (Because apparently those are for the racoons. But that’s another Pit thread.) But I was getting accustomed to handfuls of fresh mint every day and now there has been a substantial interruption in supply. Perhaps this should be a lesson about mint gluttony. I was getting very spoiled for a while.
It’s not Athena who’s weird; it’s the climate where she lives that’s weird. I think the growing season up that way is what, about 7 days each side of the summer solstice? 'Bout two weeks, is that right?
My guess is that just about anything planted in a container and left to overwinter in it will die in northern climes. Plants get their winter insulation from being in the ground, not in a container. I managed to kill daisies in a planter - the noxious weeds of the west.
I’m sorry to hear about your landlords razing the plants, cowgirl. I’m sure it was easier than weeding or something extreme like that. :rolleyes: to your useful plant killing landlords.
I know. I’m too sad to be venomous. And besides, my venom would probably be minty-flavoured anyway, from all I’ve consumed in the past few months (see above re: mint gluttony).
I tried to transplant mint once. I thought I could just pull up a bit of mine (well, my landlords’, I guess) and take it to my friend’s house. Several hours, much blood/sweat/tears, and many garden tools later, I had managed to hack out a bit - those roots don’t fool around, let me tell you.
It struggled along in the pot for a while and eventually sprung to life, but didn’t last the winter.
That’s what i was going to say. We had mint in our small back yard when i last lived in Sydney, and no matter how frequently we cut it, and even tried to pull it all up, it just kept growing back in a very short amount of time.
I too have killed mint, but then I’m very talented. People say “you can’t kill mint” or “you can’t kill daylilies” or whatever, and I say, “You guys are amateurs.” This wasn’t at all in the winter, and I live in South Carolina. I should be drowning in mint. But no.
