I don’t have much luck growing mint. I can grow buckets of basil and Vietnamese coriander. I had a lemongrass plant in my former office. However, successful mint cultivation escapes me. It never winters over well. I have to buy new plants every year. It gets leggy and doesn’t taste as strong as the supermarket herbs.
Many years ago, friends planted some mint in the postage-stamp-sized plot of soil that Julian had on his apartment’s patio. The stuff came back and crowded out everything else year after year. For all we know, there’s still some mint outside that apartment 30 years after he moved out. Mint is about the only plant Julian had success growing, which doubles my misery.
I threw out this year’s mint plants today. The aphids had feasted on the plants for weeks. Maybe this was a good thing. By devouring the mint, the aphids ignored the basil and other plants on the upper deck.
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That’s funny — we have the opposite problem here. Some mint and oregano that I planted quite a few years ago in a barrel had escaped (re-seeding itself and then by roots), until this spring it had taken over at least half of the front yard, which is otherwise a rock garden with sedums and similar drought-tolerant plants (mint and oregano are also quite drought-tolerant, which is good in the dry side of Washington state where we live). We’ve spent the entire summer digging it down to a small patch of oregano. In the coming years I will have to stay more vigilant!