After not getting the african violets from Freecycle. I posted up my own want ad calling out to anyone who wanted to give away some plants, cuttings, divisions, or seeds. I got a lot of responses! It was surprising because I wasn't expecting anyone to respond. A nice lady who had an overgrown yard with many different plants volunteered to give me anything I wanted. She gave me quite a bit but I'll show you in an other post. Really most of the stuff I don't know the name of and neither did she. I forgot a pot and some cutting at her house so I will be picking those up today also.
In order to get the cuttings and plants from the kind lady I needed pots. I went to the garden center on the mission to get only pots and a some potting mix. Now we all know that what you plan to buy is only half of what you get. So I quickly grabbed what I wanted but decided to walk around. That was a mistake I should have just gone to the register. But really I am glad because it resulted in these 2 beauties.
A red snapdragon yet to bloom.
The much searched for Chocolate Mint!
I saw plenty of things I wanted. I saw cyclamen in every shade possible! There was pink, white, purple, red, light pink, dark pink. But I resisted but I really wish I hadn't. I need some indoor plants and that cyclamen would have been great. I saw bunch of herbs I'd love to get. Sweet potato vine, pansies, mums, salvia, bougainvillea, ornamental kale, and more. I went to one section of the garden center I never venture into. It is across from the perennial section that I love. It has a big sign that say vegetables. Well I went inside and was surprised to see not that many vegetables. There was to one side cactuses and the other herbs. To the herb side I went first and that is where I saw chocolate mint. I love mint plants I love mint and I've been wanting chocolate mint. I'm trying to grow some mint from seed but it is taking soooo long. The snapdragon was 1.59 and the mint was 1.99.
Now to wait for the growth. I'm really excited about the mint. I'm so mint crazy I'm thinking of ripping out the dumb decision of pampas grass and replacing it with mint. It's a long planter one of the first things I got. I planted candytuft, godetia, and sweet william with stupid pink pampas grass. The only thing that showed up was pampas grass and 1 or 2 candytufts. I then transplanted some candyturfts from the corkscrew vine container. Now I just want mint after my candytufts are done. Oh mint sigh.
7 comments:
mmm, chocolate mint.My fav smelly plant from this year is chocolate cosmos.On a warm day the flower (which are petite and chocolatey dark red/brown) smells like belgian chocs!My mint keeled over with some rotting disease, so thats on next years to grow list.If its so invasive why is it so hard to grow from Seed?
Glad you got some free cuttings, and what a great idea to do it on freecycle.
Are you by any chance excited about your new mint? *grin*
I know why you might be tempted to just plant it in the ground, but really... you should try to resist! It goes... well, everywhere. At least, it does here. Maybe the dry Texas climate keeps it more in check?
It's great that you found the chocolate mint. Good going - enjoy watching everything grow!
Snappy- those chocolate cosmos sound good. I'm sorry about your mint. It is very invasive. My first mint seeds suffered the fate that many of my first plants did, waterlogged soil. It holds too much moister. I have some mint in a tiny peat pot that is doing alright but I thought they would grow more.
blackswap _girl - I'm really excited about my mint. I love mint and especially this chocolate one. Well I don't have ground to plant my mint in. I live in an apartment so I only have pots. The texas climate doesn't keep mint in check. My sister has pineapple mint and it took over the little section she put it in.
Kate- Thank you I'm glad I found my mint too. It's funny how things pop up when you aren't looking for them.
Good luck with the Chocolate mint, Vanillalotus - I used to have it and loved the smell.
Mint does sound like a better choice for a container garden - pampas grass has such sharp edges that it can slice your hands when you're working with it.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Congrats on the new stuff! I love mint, too and I don't mind the invasive quality. I mean, what other plant makes you look forward to weeding some out?
When someone gave us a few sprigs of spearmint to plant, I was really happy to finally have some in the garden. After try to get rid of it for 3 years I'm not happy at all. the rhizomes broke easily and any left in the ground sprouted. It's good that you will keep the chocomint in a pot!
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