Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

After one year we cut back all the mint in one growbed - but never quite realised just how much growth we would have in year two!
I think that we are going to try and dry it all out and seperate the roots from the clay balls and have a bonfire with the roots!
We shall have to empty the growbed and refill it once the clayballs have been shaken out and hosed down.

We have learnt our lesson - to only grow slow growing mint such as apple mint or sweet pineapple mint which is not quite so invasive!

WD and OH

Wow. Time to make major amounts of mint sauce and dry it for tea. Mind you, in this weather I don't know how it will dry. Guess I'll be swimming to you on my next visit.

haha ahhhh mint

Yeah I learnt my lesson a little while ago. It is on my list of what not to plant in a grow bed for the reasons that you mention

Add mint basil to that as well. Same result in a very short time and it sends out very strong runners. In the dirt for this one

Floating plant baskets work very well too Mantis!

Yeah they would be if I could afford to take the lid off the fishtank, but algae in summer and frosts coming down in winter sort of make this hard
I will get all I want off the plant in the dirt
Tomatoes are another bed clogging plant and in gravel I suspect are much worse to clean out than in clay ball beds.
Hoping to have a couple of beds filled with clay balls in the near future

seems like u should just grow it in a really cheap medium and throw out the medium every year and replace . But wow that's crazyness.

i pull mine out on a regular basis, trim the roots, break it up give it away to ppl....

it thrives when i do it.... i chopped it up with a shovel for richard.. its just a rampard weed in my eye.... but geese i couldnt live with out it so god damn tasty

That reminds me. My parents used to run an Aquatic Centre and they used to grow mint in lilly baskets with gravel. Whenever my dad would pull out an over grown basket from the cultivation ponds, he would break up the clumps into smaller plants to be sold to customers, but the majority of the root ball would still be mixed in amongst the gravel. He would dump the contents onto a corrugated iron sheet stick a piece of polythene over it and leave it to dry for a month.
Later once it was totally dry it would be broken up* and then thrown into a large bucket of water. The gravel would sink. The dry plant matter would float and get washed out and thrown on to the compost heap. The gravel was then effectively cleaned ready for use again.

* The breaking up involved an 8 year old boy who would gleefully jump up and down on the lump of gravel and, by then, dessicated roots. Bonus points if you can guess who that 8 year old was.

That's why mint plays a big part in my erosion-control experiments!

Drying out the root/media ball and then burning it would release the media back, plus sterilizing it, wouldn't it?

Interesting idea Karen....

I have a little well, that fills just before one of my growbeds, it's effectively a tiny GB with no media. I use it for visually checking flow, taking water samples etc
And groing mint. Mint needs no raft, just whack a root in the water. If you have covers on your FT, no probs their either, just stick the mint between the tank and the lid, it WILL grow. you can't stop it, but this does seem to reduce the root-mass, perhaps because it never finds purchase, i'm not really sure.

Nice, I'm going to have to try that. My covers are wooden fence boards on a frame, so there are gaps between the boards I could put some mint in.

Mint has a tendency to take over even in dirt. No surprise it will do so in AP. Actually it makes a good ground cover in my opinion. Less maintenance than a lawn. No special tools needed to maintain, just grab and pull.