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Thread: Plants You Regret?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Northern UT
    Posts
    762

    Plants You Regret?

    Have you ever planted something that later regretted? I don't really mean a tree in the wrong place, or a bush that you didn't like. I mean a plant that after the fact made you just hate it.

    I let my daughter plant some herbs three years ago. One of which was mint. Hey it smells good and we had planned on using it in our herbal tea. However, it is not an annual, but a perennial, which we didn't know. It is also very hardy. I mean you simply cannot kill it. It even kept growing in the winter despite cold and snow. Last summer we dug it up as much as we could, watered it with vinegar which was supposed to kill it, yet it survived. This past winter it kept growing again. Yesterday I pulled up bricks and dug up every bit of it I could find. I searched and removed every leaf and bit of root I could find no matter how small. Yet I know it will grow back and haunt me next year.
    I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.... It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur....the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Montana has a spell on me. It is grandeur and warmth. Of all the states it is my favorite and my love.

    John Steinbeck


  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    McKean, PA
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    If you think mint is bad don't ever plant any Swamp Marigold anywhere within a mile of your property. the plant sends rhizomes out through the soil an even if you kill the visible plant with roundup the rhizomes continue to grow and spread and can break the surface many many feet away. Then that plant sends out more rhizomes.
    swamp.jpg
    Last edited by Lee Schierer; 04-02-2019 at 9:33 PM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,685
    Yes, mint can be tenacious and I regret planting some near our small fish pond off the patio. As you can imagine, it loves the moisture. LOL That said, it's very popular with our honeybees so I have actually planted more in other areas where if it spreads a little, it will not be an issue. There are many varieties of mint, too, some of which can be labeled misleadingly.

    While I never planted it, I know of quite a few properties in the are where folks planed bamboo...and picked the 'wrong' kind. It's taking over the world!
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  4. #4
    Poison Ivy. I didnt plant it, but it sure took hold. Was tough to eradicate.
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

    “If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

  5. #5
    Oregano, Shasta Daisy, catmint (catnip), garlic chives, Johnny Jump Up, creeping charlie, purple aster, Cleome; there is a pretty long list of varieties that blur the difference between "garden plant" and "irremovable menace" Heck, even dandelions were originally just a food crop.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Granby, Connecticut - on the Mass border
    Posts
    350
    Wisteria. I had absolutely no idea how invasive it is. It sends these tendrils 30, 40 feet from the main plant, and the things root themselves every few feet. And there are dozens of them, running in all directions so you end up with this crazy patchwork of tough, rooted vines running every which way, and climbing everything vertical in their path, like firewood stacks, trees, whatever.

    And the worst is, when it blooms, it's SPECTACULAR and smells wonderful so I can't bring myself to cut it down (not, I think, that it would stop it). I have cut it back, but at one point it had grown up a utility pole, and the guy wires supporting it, so that when it bloomed there was this 40 foot tower of foot long blooms.

    Oh, and cat-tails. I have this little, 30 foot diameter pond, and I thought some cat tails would look nice, but they completely swallowed the pond. I've been pulling them out for years, but they come back from, I guess, rhizomes under the water. If I don't get to them for a year, they eat the entire pond again.

    Ken

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Platt View Post
    Wisteria. I had absolutely no idea how invasive it is. It sends these tendrils 30, 40 feet from the main plant, and the things root themselves every few feet. And there are dozens of them, running in all directions so you end up with this crazy patchwork of tough, rooted vines running every which way, and climbing everything vertical in their path, like firewood stacks, trees, whatever.

    And the worst is, when it blooms, it's SPECTACULAR and smells wonderful so I can't bring myself to cut it down (not, I think, that it would stop it). I have cut it back, but at one point it had grown up a utility pole, and the guy wires supporting it, so that when it bloomed there was this 40 foot tower of foot long blooms.

    Oh, and cat-tails. I have this little, 30 foot diameter pond, and I thought some cat tails would look nice, but they completely swallowed the pond. I've been pulling them out for years, but they come back from, I guess, rhizomes under the water. If I don't get to them for a year, they eat the entire pond again.

    Ken
    Wisteria is the worst of the worst!

  8. #8
    Grass....every week in the summer I gotta cut it!

  9. #9
    Grass.

    I hate the stuff. To keep it nice requires so many chemicals, lots of water and much cutting. Dog pees on it and it looks like crap in a hurry.

    Planted a bunch of pacasandra a few years ago. I was warned against it so far so good.

    I grow bamboo in containers. After trying to break up to transplant one container I would never ever ever plant it in the ground. Just a little reading tells you so much though..

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Yorktown, VA
    Posts
    2,754
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Citerone View Post
    Wisteria is the worst of the worst!
    The American wisteria is much less invasive/aggressive than the Chinese/Japanese varieties. Something like these would be a well behaved garden asset.

    https://www.monrovia.com/plant-catal...ican-wisteria/

    https://www.monrovia.com/plant-catal...ucky-wisteria/
    Last edited by Ted Calver; 04-02-2019 at 10:23 PM.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Deep South
    Posts
    3,970
    English ivy.

  12. #12
    Some things that are too aggressive can be put to hard labor. Pennyroyal mint repels Mosquitos and other biting bugs.
    You can put it in a "turf top seat" sit right on it and pluck some to rub on neck and arms. The seats go back to Middle Ages
    or earlier. We had one that fell apart when we had to move it to accommodate some heavy landscaping. Need to make another one. Other plants were used too. Easy to find old cartoon like drawings of TTS.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Location
    Elmodel, Ga.
    Posts
    798
    Wisteria for me too. I bought a house years ago and the woman who owned it would get leftover plants form her employer and she would just plant them wherever there was a empty spot. She planted a circle of red tips around the well, and then planted the wisteria among them. It climbed over each tree along with several pines in the area and actually looked like an umbrella under it. It covered everything and ended up strangling the pines. When they died, they couldn't fall because of all the wisteria holding them up. I wound up cutting down everything to get to the well and to this day am still battling the runners and new growth form that bush. The trunk of the wisteria was 8" in diameter. I drilled and poured stump killer, straight roundup on it and it killed the stump, but not the runners.
    My Dad always told me "Can't Never Could".

    SWE

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    Lake Gaston, Henrico, NC
    Posts
    8,973
    Leyland Cypress. They lived long enough to get forty feet tall, and then almost all got the "wind burn" that they end up with. I wish I had just planted native Red Cedars.

  15. #15
    Ipomoea alba, sometimes called the tropical white morning-glory or moonflower...Incredibly prolific and once it goes to seed - volunteers show up for years to come. (Although it does make nice big flowers. I scanned one...first pic on my website)

    Mugwort - Didn't plant it - it does the rhizome thing and it's hard to get rid of. Put down GOOD ground cloth...it busted through it and pokes out of the edges. What a pain...
    IBILD High Resolution 3D Scanning Services

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