Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
borderokie

lemon balm and catmint questions

borderokie
10 years ago

Was about to plant these guys in my garden when I thought mint hmmm better go see. So I find it is of course very invasive. I know some of you have it in your garden so how hard is it to keep in control. Do I need to plant it in a closed bottom container. It also said it would sow itself from seed. Thanks Sheila

Comments (5)

  • Macmex
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sheila,

    I have had lemon balm in my main garden since 2006. It does reseed (thankfully) and apparently spreads slowly, at best, by roots. I hardly consider it invasive. It is one of those plants which is delightful and delightfully easy to grow. We often use lemon balm and spearmint to make a delightful iced tea.

    George
    Tahlequah, OK

  • Lisa_H OK
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Lemon balm may not be invasive, I certainly have other plants that are worse, but it is prolific in my garden. I just hoed down a bunch of it :)

    On the catmint, is it catmint or nepeta? My nepeta expands quite a bit, but then I get die back, especially when we get a lot of rain.

    Lisa

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sheila,

    My experiences are similar to George's, and I think it often depends on where you plant it. All my herbs are mixed into the veggie garden where they intermingle with many other herbs, veggies and flowers. Because they are planted around some equally aggressive plants, they hold their own and maintain their size and slowly expand, but they don't become invasive very often. I mulch all my garden beds and pathways, though, and heavy mulch does make a difference. One year I didn't have a pathway mulched at the far end of the garden (it was a drought year and I ran out of grass clippings) and I did get some little lemon balm sprouts in that path the following spring. I just dug up a few and moved them to where I wanted more lemon balm, and then I pulled up the rest and threw them on the compost pile. That's the only year I had excessive sprouting. I think it was 2006.

    In 2007 we had tons of rain and the lemon balm spread more than usual, but since I love it, i didn't care. In the following year, another drought year, the size of the clumps of lemon balm shrank back down almost to nothing after I stopped watering the garden in the midst of extreme drought. So for me, lemon balm ebbs and flows with the seasons, but it never really becomes a problem plant.

    Catmint is pretty much the same. I had it at the end of a raised bed in the veggie garden for about 10 years until it died in the drought of 2011. It would drop seed in the path and a few might sprout, but not more than 6 or 8 new seedlings a year and I was delighted to have them. I would dig them while still tiny and move them to a place where I wanted them to grow. We have cats, and our cats love catmint, so I actually have to put a tomato cage around a small catmint plant in order to let it grow large enough to survived being rolled on and crushed by the bodies of happy cats. Once the plants are a foot tall, I can uncage them and let the cats love on them.

    This year I put catmint in the new back garden and it still is caged. It is in sandier soil that drains better than the big garden does out front, and maybe it will become invasive there and I won't like it. However, I've grown it for 15 years and never had trouble with it. The few seedlings it has produced over the years merely saved me from buying more plants, and if it produced more than I wanted, I could compost them.

    You're in an area that gets a lot more rainfall than my part of Oklahoma tends to get, so you might have more trouble with invasive plants if you have adequate rainfall all summer long. We get so dry every July and August that almost nothing really gets a chance to become invasive unless I am heavily irrigating the area it is in.

    I always feel like I never have enough catmint and lemon balm. Like George, I like them as tea plants but they also are pretty plants. Neither of them is as invasive as catnip or four o'clocks. If there is any plant whose ability to reseed and grow everywhere has the potential to drive me up the wall, it would be 4 o'clocks, but only because they invade beds inside the fenced garden. Outside the fenced garden, in the shade of the pecan tree, they can grow and spread all they want....but I pull oodles of four o'clock seedlings out of the veggie garden every year. Our cats take care of any catnip seedlings that spring up where I don't want them. I just yank them out and toss them on the ground for the cats to destroy. So, if you grow four o'clocks and catnip and they are invasive in your soil and with however much rainfall you get in an average year, you may find catmint and lemon balm almost equally invasive in good soil, but in the soil I have (amended red clay in the big garden), the latter two are much less invasive than the catnip and four o'clocks.

    Hope this helps,

    Dawn

  • borderokie
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It says catmint but the other name is neptena so it is catnip?

  • Lisa_H OK
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Catnip is different than Catmint, but related. I think catmint and nepeta may be the same or at least siblings. I have "walkers low" nepeta.

    Here is a link that might be useful: catmint

Sponsored
HEMAX Construction Services & Landscaping, LLC
Average rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars34 Reviews
Innovative & Creative Landscape Contractors Servicing VA