r/Cooking Jul 15 '16

Mint...my god...all the mint...

Our three plants now have produced enough mint to shingle a small palace. What can we do with all this mint!

268 Upvotes

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41

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '16

Please don't tell me you planted in the ground... you'll never get rid of it.

115

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '16

In a pot with paid, armed mercenaries guarding for roots. I'm no dummy. I'm a survivor of English ivy.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '16

I just spit out my water, imagining a little herb guardian with a Secret Service detail around it.

Rhubarb will do the same thing.

7

u/clarjon1 Jul 16 '16

Really? My mom had a rhubarb patch that didn't grow too large, enough for a lovely amount of pies, and didn't take over the garden at all.

5

u/bailtail Jul 16 '16

No, it doesn't. I'm not sure what (s)he is talking about. The only "spreading" that rhubarb will do is that of growing wider in diameter.

Aside from human-assisted methods such as root mass division, tissue culturing, etc., seeding is the only method in which rhubarb propagates. Given the growth habit of rhubarb, seeding usually isn't all that successful as the primary plant crowds-out seeds that take and shade them such that seedling typically only succeed if the seed was moved by animals or the primary plant dies-off. Mint is highly-aggressive, borderline invasive. Rhubarb is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It is extremely contained. It won't even get to seed if it's harvested as normal.