Have You ever Planted a mistake ?

[journey11]

I've got two Variegated Porcelain Berry Vines my MIL gave me. They can be invasive in the south, but aren't here. But they do cause me trouble in that they've become a monstrously large clump of tangled vines that attract Japanese beetles like crazy. I still like them though...when they're not all chewed up anyway. They don't travel and they don't reseed here at least.

I've got a Trumpet Vine that climbs up and tries to eat my back porch every year. I just whack it back down every fall. They do send out a lot of runners, but mine have gone under the porch and haven't really prospered there. I love the big orange clusters of blooms.

Vinca Major and Purple Wintercreeper both got off to a very slow start. They were supposed to be a good ground cover solution for a dry, deep shade, poor quality patch of soil up against my front porch. They finally did fill in and they look great, however the Vinca is determined to run sideways and take over the rest of my flowerbeds and the Wintercreeper makes a run up the side of the porch with little climbing roots like Ivy has. I chop 'em back a couple times a year to keep them where I want them, grabbing them by handfuls and chopping away like crazy.

My patch of Anise (Pimpinella) brings in tons of black swallowtails every summer. It's also a very interesting plant with dark, dill-like foliage and stalks that resemble black bamboo. If I remember to harvest the umbels before they drop their seed, everything's fine, but if I don't then it reseeds itself a little too happily. The seeds are really great for baking too.

I love the smell of Datura blooms on a balmy evening and they are very showstopping plants, but they reseed like crazy too, sometimes in places you have no idea how they got there. The seed pods are mean and thorny and every part of the plant is poisonous. They replant themselves every year, including coming back up from the root (which they are not supposed to do here, supposedly not that hardy in my zone, but even this past winter didn't kill some of them.) I pull bunches of them and leave a few to enjoy.

I've had the same problem as Bay with bringing in weeds with truckloads of manure. That I will spray weedkiller on too if I can't keep up with it by pulling. I really need all the humus and stuff I can add to this hard clay to make it better, so I make that trade off.

 

[thistlebloom]

I have a beautiful Campanula, tall bells... When I bought it the woman warned me that in was invasive. In my mind that was more plants for free. Big mistake.

Ah, I believe that's the same one I deal with on a lot of properties
Cat. Does it have a white horizontal root way down when you dig it up? It's a nightmare, and if left alone will take over an entire bed. You can pull it out, and it looks like you've got the roots, but it just separates from the "mother" root, which then multiplies the number of plants you pulled exponentially. I really am dismayed when I see this one come up. Funny, on a garden tour I went to one of the gardens on exhibit had them lining the steps. ACK!!!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I'm not sure it coun't as a "weed" in that the main plant is supposed to be there, but we also have a real problem every year with the weeping cherry in our side yard. The tree itself is not an issue, it's location was planned and it is where it is supposed to be. The problem is with the runners it sends out, or, more accurately (since I know how weeping cherry trees are put together) the runners that whatever they used for a rootstock puts out. The ones that go into the lawn aren't much of an issue as they get mowed under by the gardeners. But invariably a large number of them pop up in the circle of clear soil I refer to as "The Stump" (since it used to be an enormous hollow oak stump, before it rotted away) whis is my main small bean growing area. We do our best to take down any shoots that pop up, but the whole area is riddled with rizomes, and new shoots pop up fast and tend to quickly get to sizes that are difficult to take care of with small tools. In theory the gardeners could take care of them with their weedwhackers but I have learned the hard way that, if you tell our gardners to whack something in the stump, they tend to assume you want them to whack down EVERYTHING in the stump, and then mow it and that that means they should do that every time they come from then on. So it's down to doing the best job we can ourselves.

 

[thistlebloom]

When i first met lamium maculatum I LOVED it. So I bought every variation of it. I let it crawl throughout the perennial beds before I came out of my lamium coma and realized it had taken over!

Every spring I could be seen, bent over ripping the top growth out and throwing it behind me. Kinda like a dog furiously digging a hole. If I slacked at all in this annual chore it would soon smother the hostas and any other plant that was not as quick to emerge.

This year the light went on. This behavior was all backwards! THIS spring I was more proactive. I used a shovel and a trowel and my bare hands and took it all out. I still have it. And I kept a few clumps, but those are being watched for aberrant behavior and will be dealt with at the first twitch.

I don't know anybody else who has this problem with it.
I'm just a lucky girl!

 

[Carol Dee]

@thistlebloom Well no wonder you where so quick to send me some when mine died out during the drought! It is doing nicely here filling in the bare areas and not taking over the flower bed yet.

 

[catjac1975]

Cat great minds think alike !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Free plants.

Be careful of what you wish for.

 

[thistlebloom]

@thistlebloom Well no wonder you where so quick to send me some when mine died out during the drought! It is doing nicely here filling in the bare areas and not taking over the flower bed yet.

Bwahahaha!

 

[Lavender2]

When i first met lamium maculatum I LOVED it. So I bought every variation of it. I let it crawl throughout the perennial beds before I came out of my lamium coma and realized it had taken over!

Every spring I could be seen, bent over ripping the top growth out and throwing it behind me. Kinda like a dog furiously digging a hole. If I slacked at all in this annual chore it would soon smother the hostas and any other plant that was not as quick to emerge.

This year the light went on. This behavior was all backwards! THIS spring I was more proactive. I used a shovel and a trowel and my bare hands and took it all out. I still have it. And I kept a few clumps, but those are being watched for aberrant behavior and will be dealt with at the first twitch.

I don't know anybody else who has this problem with it.
I'm just a lucky girl!

It must be luck. I don't often hear of that lamium becoming a problem. I have had Pink Pewter for a while and so far it has just claimed it's little spot. I have been there, your annual Spring dog digging action, only with 'snow on the mountain'.

I gave lamium galeobdolon (Yellow archangel) it's very own room, well it now beds up with some ferns. I like it in a corner where nothing else would grow, and it gets whacked back by the lawn mower if it attempts to escape.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I fell for that story about planting mint in a bucket to keep it from spreading. A deep bucket may contain the roots, but any mint stem that touches the ground will root and spread. Plus it makes a lot of seeds. It tried to take over a landscaping bed out front, but after a couple of years I was able to kill it out. It took a lot of digging and consistently pulling any new sprouts. The only mint I have now is next to my workshop where I keep it contained by mowing.

A neighbor brings ne about three front-end-loader loads of partially composted cow manure every year. He gets it where he feeds his cattle. It's full of burdock and grass seeds, some other weeds too but those are the main ones. I let it set until it breaks down further and use it anyway. I have to deal with a lot of sprouts but I do that because I like the cow manure. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

Oregano and lemon balm try to take over certain areas but I use a shovel and cut the main clump back to manageable size every year. Seeds and roots still try to spread it but I try to take out any that show up too far from that main clump. I also cut the middle out of those clumps with a shovel and dump compost in there to try to keep it going strong. I don't use the lemon balm for much of anything but I get a few pints of dried oregano every year out of two clumps.

I try to be careful about what I plant. I'm not always successful, but I'd like to thank some people on here for their stories about certain things, horseradish and Jerusalem artichoke come to mind, that have stopped me from planting those.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

While it never happened on our own property, one summer back in my teens over one summer me and my sister volunteered at Philipsburg Resoration near our home over part of a summer and they had a REAL problem with a certain mint cousing getting out of control, namely horehound (Marrubium vulgare). Besdies the massive patch in the herb garden (i.e. the one that was supposed to be there) there were equally huge patches all over the pasture, the fallow areas by the barn, the fields etc. In fact there was so much that when I mentioned that, before I left I would like to take some with me (I had some ideas of making horehound candy, which I am quite fond of (but which it turns out requires WAY more effort to make than I am prepared to put in) They basically said "help yourself, the more you take, the happier we'll be." (unforntunately I forgot to actually TAKE any before I was done there.)