Shelley Moore is an aspiring organic backyard gardener with hopes of becoming a true ‘green thumb’. She is the mother of two young daughters and the wife of one helpful husband. They reside in northern Utah.
If you’ve watched a few episodes (or several, like us) of the popular children’s show Yo Gabba Gabba, then you know of the segment where a guest of the show teaches the characters and the viewers a dance routine, “A Dancy Dance.”
The dance moves are explained and then it’s all put together to music. At the end of the Dancy Dance it’s a free-for-all of whatever dance moves you want to do along with the usual sing song-y words of, “Go crazy, go crazy…”
This last “go crazy” part is how I like to describe the zippy scented peppermint plant; it just grows and grows and grows! It goes crazy!
Our initial reasoning behind planting peppermint plants in our yard is due to a nasty four-letter word: mice. Yuck!
Peppermint plants transplanted from our front yard. Photo By Shelley Moore.
We’ve had our fair share of these undesirable creatures finding temporary refuge in our garage, and one actually found its way into our house!
Double yuck! (Oh, the master bathroom memories where the mouse was caught… triple yuck!)
So, planting peppermint plants was a way, we learned, to deter mice.
Reading about peppermint plants also told us how invasive they are. But to a new gardener, (and with new landscaping) I have to say it is rather a happy site to see a plant crazily growing so much and so full and green!
Peppermint plants in our front yard. Photo By Shelley Moore.
This particular spot in our front yard had only three peppermints planted if my memory serves me right. We have since planted two more on the other side so it isn’t as full over there… yet! My husband isn’t crazy about how the peppermint gets up all up in the Japanese Maple’s “business,” but with cutting some more off the other night, I found you can sort of shape the mass of peppermint plants with how it is trimmed.
From even earlier previous trimmings of the plants, I decided to plant some of the cuttings in my back yard inside our curbing. Not all of them took root, but some did! I planted some more from cuttings from the front yard in hope that it will fill in more. We’ll have to water and watch to see if they take root as well.
There is a great article here on Natural Home and Garden‘s website about the health and beauty benefits of peppermint and if the author doesn’t mind, I’d like to add one more use for this perky plant.
Peppermint cuttings in a vase. Photo By Shelley Moore.
I had an empty vase, filled with flowers and such from time to time, but I decided to just put a bouquet of peppermint in it. I thought it looked okay! Who needs flowers, right? What do you think? My husband did bring me flowers not long after and so I added them to the vase and peppermint and it did make for a better visual display. But, I have to say, a second use of peppermint cuttings is how they make a great filler for a vase of flowers. However, I don’t know if it was because of the cuttings being there before the flowers or if I had too much jammed in my vase, but the peppermint cuttings didn’t really last too long and I replaced them with another set. But with a crazy wonderful peppermint plant, that was easily accomplished.
