These 7 Plants Are Loved but INVASIVE! How to Grow Them Without Losing Your Garden

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on yeah my gardener channel in today's episode we're gonna be talking about a very popular topic that comes into our inbox and our comment section of our videos and it's one that we really like talking about because it's something that is often overlooked and it's plants that you will quickly regret planting in your garden they might be beneficial they might be awesome to have in your garden but actually in your garden might be another story these are plants that are very space-hogging rapid growing and they can be seen as slightly invasive these are plants that will out-compete your other plants choke them out for space sunlight nutrients water things like that but even though you had good intentions to plant them they quickly became a nuisance or an annoyance just because they spread very easily or they grow really fast and just kind of take up a lot of space so those are fun those are plants we're going to talk about today but i'm also going to share with you two ways that we kind of control them to make them not as much of a nuisance still while getting their benefit because a lot of these plants are completely intentionally planted they're not weeds by any means they're actually plants that we want in the garden but like i said if you plant them in in the garden which we'll get into what i mean by that um if you plant them actually in the garden then they can take over and become a nuisance so let's get into what those plants are right now or at least some of them and then we'll get into two of the ways that we help control them while we can still enjoy them so let's go the first plant species that you never want to plant in the garden is mint mint is one that i absolutely love we have quite a few different mint plants here we have a pineapple mint we have a chocolate mint we have a peppermint we have a is called a corsican mint it's the world's smallest mint we have a spearmint we have an apple mint we have a mojito mint i just love biodiversity as you guys have probably caught on by now i love biodiversity i love the uniqueness that plants provide and so we have a ton of different mints we actually have a little mini mint collection and we're always trying to find those next ones to add to them and just kind of see what's out there because they're so cool and they're all different in some way but mint is a plant that will take over your garden and absolutely wreak havoc and just give you a fit of a time because how easily it spreads in fact this is how easily it spreads we just planted this chocolate mint here this year and it has already what it has done is come in close you can check this out here and this is exactly why they can become very invasive because they do not stay where they are planted let me show you what i'm talking about so mint is actually a vine it grows in a bush but when it gets too tall what happens is it falls over and when it falls over what it does it sends out these little runners here and you can see these are all facing up and that's because they are all beginning to root and so if you look at the bottom of each one of these little nodes here these are well they're free plants yes but each one of these little nodes will set down roots and it quickly can get out of control those all set down new plants those will set down new plants and those will set down new plants and pretty soon this whole space here becomes chocolate mint it can take a lot of maintenance here's another one here you can see if they get too long they start falling over and they will set down roots as soon as they touch the soil because they propagate very easily it allows you to make a lot of free plants like if you're someone who sells for the farmers market or you have a lot of friends that you know just want free plants you can get a lot of free plants out of mint very very easily but if you let them root too long they'll take over a full space now the next plant that can spread very easily and can easily become invasive is chives now chives are probably the most notorious of these plants because we all plant them with good intention in fact we had them at our old house and within two or three years they'd become so invasive that they were almost impossible to eradicate the seeds from the seed heads blow everywhere and what happens is then those sprout and those produce seed heads and those blow everywhere and they're wonderful in a location but in many locations where you don't want them they can really become pesky in fact like i said at our old house we had them in the sidewalk cracks in just three years mind you we had planted just one small plant like this thinking it'd be a good idea for some loaded baked potatoes because that's our favorite thing during the summer throw a baked potato on the grill throw some sour cream inside and then throw some chives in and you've got yourself you got yourself a complete meal right there i just i could literally eat those all day but a good you know a good idea with good intentions turned very bad very quickly because those seed had sprouted everywhere and what happened we had like i said we had uh chives sprouting up in sidewalk cracks we had chives sprouting up in all of our flower beds and we had chives also sprouting up in our koi pond like our koi pond nothing is safe from these things they will sprout everywhere and they just go crazy so we were every spring we were picking out chives that were growing up in just random locations and like i said while it's beneficial and while it's delicious it can really be invasive and so one way we found we we helped to control the spreading of this of this chive is early spring it'll start to form flower heads these are delicious and they're actually edible and we'll eat them in salads but you want to eat them before they you know just right when they open but you do not want to let them form seeds as they form flower heads we'll just clip them off and pick them off and what will happen is those plants will eventually die back because they're actually a member of the allium family and alliums will flower their second year but what it will also do is we'll send down little bulbs they'll divide they'll actually divide much like a daylily or you know a hosta or anything like that they'll actually form bulbs and those bulbs down there will sprout new chives the old chives will die back once they flower and then the new chives will grow this guarantees you a continuous harvest year after year without the ridiculous spreading that can happen if you just let it go go wild so clip it back and if you see a lot of yellowing that's like i said that is very natural that is the old plant that has since flowered and is just dying back it's taking all of that energy pushing out a flower and once that flower is either spread at seed or dies the plant dies and that's just kind of the natural course for life but it keeps this plant where you wanted it and not where you don't so let's move on to the third plant that you might quickly regret planting in the garden all right so we're here with the third plant that you are quickly going to regret planting in the garden and that is oregano now i know i'm going to get a lot of flack for this but let me say this i love oregano we absolutely use so much of it in our cooking and and just day to day life that oregano is something that we probably use more than any other herb in our family but no family can use this much oregano you see this oregano was started from just one plant that one plant then turned into four plants those four plants then were divided out spread throughout the garden and now there is six plants that are about a foot and a half two feet in diameter and each spring they then put out flowers which are great for pollinators absolutely great for pollinators won't disagree there one bit but if you don't get all those flower heads you don't clip them back they will spread seeds and those seeds will sprout and they will grow whole new plants they reseed very easily the other thing these do is these also much like mint once they get too heavy if they fall down on the ground they will sprout or they will grow a whole new plant basically out of like a runner they will propagate uh just by the root touching the or by the stem touching the ground it'll set down new roots and that'll become a whole new plant they can quickly overtake a space here where this just started out as good intentions uh three years ago we planted like i said just two small plants here on the corner and now they're so big that every summer we have to clip them back and while we get a lot of oregano it's actually taking up this space far more than we ever wanted and it's actually choking out one of the hardiest plants in our garden which is the butterfly bush we absolutely love or the bee balm i should say not the butterfly bush but the bee balm um we have this bee balm here and it's almost choking out the bee balm so it's just a very aggressive plant it takes up a lot of space we don't necessarily you know not utilize this plant but we do regret planting it here because it's almost impossible to keep it contained once it grows and we want some in the garden but we just don't want all of this it's a lot to have here all right we're here with the fourth plant that you will quickly regret planting in the garden and that is dill now i love dill and i'll be the first to say that dill is a great summertime crop i mean it's just it goes in everything for us from omelets to uh to potato salads to just um i mean quite literally anything we'll put dill on everything from fish tacos to you know oh my gosh like i said just about everything to pickles even when we make homemade pickles but this stuff right here it's called dill weed for a reason and that's because it spreads like a weed but it's very easily contained it's just if you let it get out of control that's where things can go wrong so dillweed it spreads by seed it goes to seed very easily and those seeds have near 100 germination i guarantee it because what we had what we had happened was at our cottage garden we let some dill seed we let some dill weed go to seed and it happened when we were away for a couple weeks we didn't manage the the stuff we didn't cut it back and what ended up happening was it spread its seed and when it spread its seed all those sprouted up and now in every single bed throughout the entire 3000 square foot garden every spring we have dill seed it started from just four plants that we planted just four four plants four plants now spread throughout the entire garden and now every single spring we actually have to take a small tiny rake and rake the dill sprouts that come up might be a great thing might have good intention but there's just no way we're going to need all that dill and if we let it grow it's going to end up choking out all of our other plants because it grows so quickly and it does take up quite a lot of space once it starts bushing out so it's just something to consider that if you do plant dill you know it it does okay in the garden but it does not play nice once it's in the garden and goes to seed um just something to consider so you clip those flower heads back and you should be fine but but watch out for it because it's one that you'll regret very quickly here's that other oregano plant i was talking about this was just from a small little a small little root cutting that we took from that original mother plant and in one year it's done this so again like i said oregano watch out for it watch out for it and here's the fifth plant that you might quickly regret planting in the garden and that is strawberries now strawberries are one of my favorite soft-bodied fruits we will eat them till we pretty much get sick to our stomach during the summer they are just so delicious so they're just intoxicatingly sweet they are absolutely incredible but let me tell you what when strawberries start going to runner form and they start taking over the garden it happens starting in early spring and goes all the way till fall they'll produce runners and these runners are happening right now believe it or not believe it or not these little suckers right here form whole new plants that grow if they touch the ground well then i don't have any around me right now because i pulled a lot of them up but there's some right over next to you there that actually then sprout grow whole new plants and uh yeah i don't have any in this lane because i really pulled a lot of them out but once they take hold and they get they get rooted they then form more runners and that that runner will form a whole new plant and form all new runners and they can quickly overtake a space in a matter of a year each one of these beds we started with just 25 plants in each one of these beds remember 25 plants that's just 50 plants in just one year we had close to 300 plants all these beds we took all the runners and just planted them in trying to contain them those 300 plants last year we did a video i think was titled being forced to thrown out being forced to throw out 5 000 strawberry runners it was a whole wheelbarrow full i'm not even joking when i say a whole wheelbarrow this thing was mounted to the top of just strawberry runners because we have nowhere else to put them once they you know once they produce runners and you plant all those runners out and you get a nice bed full they look great trust me but at the end of the summer we're going to take hedge pruners and we're going to go along the bed and we're just going to trim off all the ones that are hanging off and we're going to be forced to compost them there's just nothing we can do with that many plants and they will spread and spread and spread until they take over a full space now if you have a strawberry farm or you have a lot of space to give them give them lots of space designate a whole oh your whole patch and just have a strawberry patch that's great but if you have a raised bed garden where you have limited space and you need to make sure that things are nice and contained this might not be one that you want to plant or just know that if you do plant it they take over very very quickly and by very quickly i mean in the blink of an eye quick so this one is one you really have to watch out for but it can also be very rewarding i am not discounting that one bit we have so many strawberries in here we're probably gonna get by my estimation we're probably going to get about 20 pounds of strawberries from these two beds here which is just awesome we could even maybe get more than that but this is going to be an incredible year definitely one of the best years for strawberries we've ever had and it's uh yeah it's just it's it's going amazing so happy about it but be careful all right we're here with the final sixth and seventh plant that you might quickly regret planting in your garden one of those is raspberries now raspberries we love it's probably in there in our top three favorite soft bodied fruits of all time they're just delicious they're so nutritious but they can take over every one of their canes just much like a strawberry will form roots underneath the soil and those roots will then pop up just like they are right here just like they are over there over here this started from just two plants just two plants three years ago and now we have an entire patch now granted again not complaining we're definitely gonna have a bumper crop of raspberries this is going to be one of the biggest years for raspberries we've ever had but i'm telling you what they definitely do not shy away from taking over a space and they'll grow up i mean we even have been mowing them over where they'll grow two feet away from where they're originally planted and just pop up in your yard and i'll just be mowing them over all summer long because they have got to stay contained in this space here otherwise they're going to be out of control so that's why we're kind of mowing them over and we have a designated space for them which is something that i recommend you guys doing is just like i said with strawberries designate a patch keep them contained and just know that you're going to be you're going to be taking care of them for the next couple years because i mean this is crazy check this out so see these plants right here these are raspberries growing from all the way over here these plants are what resulted in this that's like four feet from these you got a plant right here there's a new plant right here all of these were never here last year they just are growing from a root system that goes underneath the soil and they just keep sprouting up so pretty soon this whole bed here will be solid raspberries which i'm not going to be complaining about but if this was your garden and you needed to have this space designated for something else you might be regretting it all right and the very final one that i want to talk about is actually back here and it got here because of how invasive it is and that is chamomile we planted chamomile in our bed two years ago and three years ago absolutely love it we make chamomile tea all the time with it it's a great plant to have but if this stuff goes to seed each one of these flower heads this is not a flower this is a flower head it's known as a it's known as a pseudo petal this right here is something that will produce 500 600 seeds in a single flower like i said 500 seeds a thousand seeds 1 500 seeds 2 000 seeds very quickly and they'll produce more than that this plant was just being neglected off in the often the shade there behind all those raspberry plants and it produced that many that many flowers those are going to go to seed you're going to have like 2 000 seeds spreading throughout your garden and like i said if you have a sunny location with good soil those will spread even faster we every single spring we pick out no less than probably 1500 to 2000 of the chamomile sprouts and what we'll do is we'll kind of rake them in and hopefully they compost in and we don't have to pull them all out by hand because you know it can be a lot of work to pull them all out but they're very beneficial they're very delicious they're you know they're very nutritious to have but you just have to know how to contain them and so if you're going to be away for a long period of time again it's much like the dill and it's much like the chives when they go to flower because the flowers produce seeds you've got to pick those flowers off quickly otherwise you're going to regret planting them in your garden and i do just want to take a quick second to note how beautiful of a day it is today i hope you're having a great day wherever you're at and i hope the weather is improving and is amazing wherever you're at because i'll tell you what today it's 75 degrees a slight breeze so we're back here with our herb garden and i wanted to talk about two ways that we help control these plants because we do like them like i said now as i've kind of noted a lot of these plants that propagate very easily by seed an easy way to keep them controlled and actually in your garden is just by making sure you keep up with cutting the flower heads off on a timely basis so they don't spread by seed but the ones that can spread via like root system or that can you know create runners and drape all over the place and then start rooting all over the place those ones need a little bit more care one of the ways we control them if they spread by root system say things like mint or things like raspberries and stuff like that what we'll do is we'll put them in a container here the container helps keep them contained and this way they can't spread their roots out because the roots are met they meet a barrier so they'll quickly fill out this space and then they'll just run out of space and they won't be able to spread from there so that would apply to things like mint you know your oregano even things like raspberries would be great for that so that's one way we help control that the last way that i want to talk about controlling is a really easy way if they if they spread by bulb or if they um are a plant that doesn't take over really quickly but um you know one that can spread by bulb really quickly this would apply to some maybe some stuff like chives maybe some stuff like like your mint you know it doesn't really always apply but it is a method we've used in the past and and it can work if you only plant seasonally you know if you have um if you have every intention to pull it out at the end of the year but you just want to get it for that one year there's a really simple way to kind of keep it contained without allowing it to spread and still having it in your garden and so that method is by taking the plant and actually keeping it in its container now this is a special note that the container has to be big enough to host this plant so this is plenty fine here this is i think a uh this is a four inch pot three inch pot something like that and so what we wanna do is we wanna just take the plant dig a hole pop it in the ground now this might seem crazy but this is something we've done in the past with really good success because what this allows the plant to do is it allows the roots to leave the pot because every pot has drainage holes the roots will leave the pot and will actually take root in the soil but this right here does the exact same thing as our raised bed does where we don't allow the roots to come out and spread because the plant is contained into here the roots that come out of here are not roots that will multiply new plants these are called feeder roots feeder roots are different than surface roots surface roots can turn into new plants feeder roots feed on nutrients and water so that way you can keep them contained still while being in your garden so there you go there are some plants that you might regret planting in your garden but also have a lot of benefit to actually having around your garden so hopefully you can keep them contained still while enjoying them and hopefully these methods of containment work for you also i'd be interested to know if there's any plants down below let me know that you might plant that you might also regret that i did not mention here i'd be interested to know all right i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new and as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home we'll catch y'all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 597,681

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: I0iS15aholQ

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2019