Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for you.
And this one’s going to be a short one cause I know some of you guys don’t like my long
videos.
Anyways, what I’m doing today is we’re playing in the garden.
It’s a nice winter’s day.
You guys can see my lettuce is growing amazing and I’ve got all kinds of other stuff I’m
growing.
I’ll give you guys a garden tour pretty soon in another upcoming video of what I’m
growing this winter.
But today we’re gonna talk about mint, right?
And I only recommend and encourage you guys to grow mint in containers, right?
And in this case I’m growing mint in a self-watering container actually called a Growums which
is like an earth box I got for $10 at Lowes.
That was a long time ago so those are no longer available.
I also grow mint in other kind of pots in different areas of my garden.
But I only recommend you guys grow mint in containers or pots.
Don’t just plant them in the field, or in your raised bed.
All this kind of stuff, cause some bad stuff is gonna happen.
So I’m gonna show you guys what happened to some mint that escaped my containers, that
got into one of my raised beds.
So one of the things you don’t want to do is you don’t want to plant mint in a raised
bed, right?
I see newbie gardeners do it when I go over to their places.
Sometimes they just planted some herbs, and of course the little mint when it comes in
the little nice little four inch pot.
It looks so nice and tame, and tender, until you plant it in your raised bed and then in
sprawls and takes over.
So, I mean, you guys weren’t here yesterday and I started this video the second day.
But basically yesterday this whole bed basically looked like this little half that I didn’t
yet get to work on.
It was full of mint plants.
Now luckily for me we get cold weather in the winter time, and the mint doesn’t like
when it’s too cold.
It’ll continue to live but it really doesn’t like it so the growth slows down a lot.
So now I’m actually taking care of it.
But what happened is the mint got into this bed somehow and I let it grow.
And I’m like, oh yeah mint it’s nice, it’s serving me, right?
The mint is serving me.
I’ll harvest the mint, I’ll make green smoothies out of the mint.
I love mint, it’s good.
And I’ll use it, and plus I didn’t have anything at that time to plant in this bed
so I’m like hey mint’s there.
Why dig it all up and replant it?
I did end up sticking some eggplants mixed in with the mint at a certain point last year.
And basically the eggplants really didn’t perform cause they literally got outcompeted
by the mint.
But now that it’s a new season I definitely got better things to do so, you guys look.
I literally was sitting here for like two hours yesterday cutting up mint plants and
putting them in this five gallon bucket.
I got one five gallon bucket, and another half five gallon bucket.
So like seven and a half gallons of mint plants.
I just come in here and take the mint plants and I cut them up.
And then they basically get cut up into my compost that then will turn into the new soil
for me.
Now that’s not where I stop, right?
Cutting them up are only the first step cause if you just cut off the top growth, guess
what?
Mint likes to send its roots down and spread out underneath the ground, and then just shoot
up in random places.
So aside from just cutting off the top growth then I gotta even take the second step and
I gotta sit here and find the roots and literally pull them up.
So let me show you guys actually what’ll happen if you plant mint in a raised bed and
how rambunctious it will be.
So the crazy thing about mint is that it sends out runners, and these are basically like
little roots that basically go through the whole, like, soil area of whatever it’s
contained in or, in this case, not contained in.
It’s contained to this whole raised bed, so it basically spread out and took over the
whole thing.
But I wanna show you guys what happens is, so, you can see this is like the mint plant’s
up here and if I pull these mint plants up, you know, that’s alright, they basically
come up and I can compost these.
But what you’re not seeing is right down in here.
Now look at this soil here, I don’t know if you guys can see that super clearly, but
if I just take my finger and kind of dig up underneath the soil here—wow this is crazy.
If I just pull up the soil here we got these long roots that like go in every direction.
You can see it’s coming up here.
You can see like all these roots are just all up along here.
I mean, this is like super long mint roots right here.
I mean this is just some of it.
And I didn’t even get it all.
I mean, I’m feeling roots down in here that I can’t even pull up.
It just goes down and down.
And this is totally, like, taking over the whole area.
So here, right here, look at this.
Totally insane, watch all these roots.
They especially like to run around the edge of the container it’s in.
So we’ll pull this up for you guys, but look at all this.
This is just massive, massive, mint roots forever.
And I’m reaching down here, I feel them all.
And just pulling them all up, I mean look at all this.
All these mint roots.
And I mean I still got a lot of work to do to pull these guys out.
And here’s the thing: once you got ‘em, you’ll probably never get rid of them cause
unless I dig literally all the dirt out this bed, clean it, and put it back in, I’m not
gonna get it all.
And that’s just what it is, right?
That’s what happens when you plant mint in a bed.
You don’t want this to happen so don’t do it in the first place.
It’s a lot easier to tell you guys this than, than like, you know, me like, oh the
mint’s growing, it’s beneficial, I’ll take it out later.
It got really bad, man.
And this is like, after like one season.
So don’t waste your time.
That being said, mint is an amazing food, and I want you guys to grow it in some place.
You know, whether you’re going to grow it in a container, maybe in your kitchen in a
little pot.
Grow it somewhere where it can be controlled.
I mean, if you have acreage and you don’t care about a certain area, right?
That it’d be great if it took over, right?
Plant it there, right?
But do me a favor, don’t plant it in your raised bed unless you have like a hundred
raised beds and you have a few extra ones that you don’t really care about.
Cause otherwise you’re gonna sit here like me probably for the next day or two pulling
up as many mint roots as I can so it doesn’t return.
And mint is an amazing anti-oxidant rich food.
I want you guys to include more mint in your fresh salads, in your smoothies, in your juices
each and every day.
But once again, don’t plant it in a raised bed or you’re gonna pay.
And woah, look at this man.
Even worse, I’ve got the leaves on the top, I’ve got some dog poop in there too.
But, we just scrape back some of the dirt on the top of this soil you can see like literally
we have a highway of the mint roots.
I mean, here, mint root, mint root, mint root, mint root, mint root, mint root, mint root,
mint root.
Like, it’s basically, like, everywhere there’s all these little mint roots.
And the crazy thing is once you pull up one it breaks off so now you basically are dividing
the mint root for itself and it’s just gonna keep growing into more pieces.
So mint, don’t do it in a raised bed.
That’s pretty much today’s episode.
If you guys take the one takeaway’s don’t plant them in a raised bed or other places
where you don’t want it to go.
I once again learned the hard way and this is how I’ve learned many things in gardening,
through the school of hard Knox.
And even though you heard it today, you might plant mint in a raised bed, and then you’ll
be like, you write under the video ‘John you’re right’ so…
I’ve learn by living and, yeah, that’s all I’ve got to say today.
I gotta finish this task and I’m planting this out in cilantro, something that’s going
to be more beneficial for me this time of year than the mint that I actually have in
other places in my garden.
So if you enjoyed this short format video hey, please be sure to give me a thumbs up.
That’ll only encourage me to make more short format videos for you guys in the future,
sharing with you guys my gardening wisdom, things that I’ve learned over the last many
years I’ve been gardening and growing food.
Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don’t miss out on
any of my new and upcoming episodes I have coming out about every three to four days.
You never know where I’ll show up or what you’ll be learning on my YouTube channel.
And be sure to check out my past episodes, my past episodes are a wealth of knowledge.
There are 1,300 videos at times, teaching you guys all aspects and how you guys can
grow your own food at home.
Also be sure to share this video with other fellow gardeners so that they don’t make
this mistake.
So, with that my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We’ll see you next time.
Until then remember, keep on growing.