You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: MINT: The easiest herb you can grow!! (If I can grow it, you SURE can!)
It is true about the taking on each others flavors. There are actually a lot of plants that you should not plant different varieties near each other. Squashes and cucumbers are two off the top of my head, would have to check my notes for the others. It has to do with cross pollination, which is in effect, making hybrid plants.
Also, just wanted to let you know, I will add your post to sotall.org in just a short while. I am tied up with a couple of things at this moment.
Good to know!
I know about cross pollination, but it seems like that would only affect the seeds produced by the pollination, not the plant itself! How strange.
I know peppers are like this. You do not want to plant spicy and sweet peppers near eachother or they will all end up spicy. (This one I DO know from experience.)
I wonder how it works!
Once the plant reproduces, you don't have pure (whatever type of)mint growing in that patch any more. It can be either one, or a sort of mixture of the two. Cross species pollination on these types of plants rarely produce seeds that are an exact match of either parent, but the are also not an exact mixture of the two. You never know exactly what is going to come up. But if you are talking about within the same year as planting, it is probably more of a smell issue. A large portion of our ability to taste comes from our ability to smell. Having two close together means you are smelling two different smells mixed. I am not the world greatest expert on this, but that is what I have been taught and it makes sense to me.
Yes, I meant the plant itself. According to different internet articles, the mints will take on the flavor of their neighbors. Pollination non necessary. I have not tried it to see how true, or how close the plants need to be.
The only thing I have done is plant peppers too close together. I had heard you should not do that, but I didn't care, partly because I kind of didnt believe the flavor of the pepper could change just by being near another variety, and party to see if it were true.
Sweet varieties that I had successfully grown before to be sweet were spicy! Not as spicy as their jalepeno and cayenne neighbors, but definitely had a kick!
Interesting stuff! Im sure there is some deep-down biological reason for it all, but I do not know what it is!