Cookaholics Bulletin Board

i do a big pot as well. gotta have my Mojito's ya know!

Laurie

All,

So, after trying a number of other things, I've finally found a way to beat the Mint Rust.

The winning combination is:

1. Being careful not to over-water

2. A copper-based antifungal spray.

I tried several other antifungus cures, but only the copper-based spray worked. And it works really well ... after only 3 weeks the rust is gone.

Amy,

I have never had a problem with mint in the foundation, nor have I ever seen any references to this in any of the gardening forums I go to all the time. Just the invasive aspect about it.

Here is my patch of mint, which took only 3 years from 6 plants (actually, 6 "weeds" I pulled up elsewhere, then stuck in the ground here)! It is surrounded by a sidewalk, to it can't get into the lawn (though I may prefer mint out there!). Now, 5 years after this photo, the peppermint is gone, so the spearmint choked it out through the years.

Mint is now thriving and outstripping the pot.

Sometimes you just gotta use the non-organic unnatural fungicide.

Spearmint is super hardy, almost too hardy. As Dave mentioned also, spearmint overran my peppermint.

My favorite mint is chocolate mint & pineapple mint. Available at most nurseries but probably not HD.

Mint spreads by sending out runners so if you don't keep it contained, you will have it everywhere. Has a tendency to choke everything around it too.

Spearmint is hardy for my climate here (zone 3), so it should winter over where you are. I do mine in a big pot. It's root bound by the end of summer, but it's the size of a small bush. Rosemary sadly is another story (not hardy over the winter, and too slow growing to be a great annual).

Carey
Rosemary is not hardy here either (zone 5), but I plant mine in a pot and bring it in for the winter and then back out again in May....never gets really big, but big enough for me to have fresh rosemary most of the year.
Ilene

Ilene, Carey,

On the other hand, I planted two sprigs of rosemary 3 years ago here. Today one of them is the size of an ottoman, and the other is the size of a Smart Car. We can't possibly use rosemary as fast as they grow; last year our upstairs neighbor made Christmas wreaths out of rosemary.

Doesn't really make up for all the other herbs that do poorly though ...

I just cut my first (albeit small) harvest of mint from my patch. Funny thing was, the mint growing along the edge, coming up between the plastic edging and the concrete, was the largest of any!

Dave,

I think that's a normal pattern for mint. For my mint in containers, it mostly comes up along the edge of the pot.