It's been kind of cool here but quite sunny and my cool loving plants are doing quite well. I have some shots here of my Dianthus, Pansies, and a plant that looks quite cute but in fact is one of the most aggressive plants I have ever introduced to my garden.
The plant is known as Banana Mint. Yes Banana. It does have a strong banana-mint aroma and flavor and has the potential for interesting teas and jellies. I was intrigued and planted some in one of my gardens because it is only supposed to be hardy to zone 5 and we are zone 2b, a much colder climate so even knowing the invasive nature of our local mints, I planted it. Big mistake. This mint doesn't follow the rules and spread to 5 of my gardens. Just the other day I put down black landscape fabric in a last ditch attempt to remove it. Weeding just encourages it. Where I took the photo is where I have allowed it to grow. It even chokes out quack grass and one day I do plan to try it in jelly.
The moral of the story, mint can't read so even if the written material says it's safe, don't believe it, even in Winnipeg, for anyone here that might read this. When pulling it, the only good thing is that it must be the most heavenly scented invasive plant I have ever introduced, but for every spreading root pulled, three or more sprout in it's place!
After taking a soil science course I was even more against using any kind of poisons in my soil, or even chemical fertlizers so I hope my organic solution will work. By blocking the light the main nutrient will be unavailable to the plants so I hope they die off gracefully and don't cause a problem known as "nitrogen fixation" when decaying plant matter uses up the nitrogen in the soil. I will record my results. Now here's some photos.
The landscape fabric on my three part tomato garden in not quite as ugly in real life as in the photos and I left it bare to help warm up the soil during the day as our nights have still been in the single digits. That's why in my opinion my garden still looks pretty sparse to me. I do have little tomatoes though.
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