Nip or Mint?

I’m sure my neighbor was relieved to see the rose bed go from muddy pit to tilled paisley last Sunday. It took me 5 hours to level the bed (I had a pile of dirt from my initial attempt at double-digging), till the hardpan, work in peat moss, dig three 18” x 18” holes, amend the fill, and plant the three Julia Child roses. Later that day, I came home from Anne’s house with iris divisions and added those too. This weekend, I buried 10 lily bulbs and plugged in a few sweet alyssum seedlings. All that’s missing is the catmint.

To obtain enough catmint to edge the entire bed, without breaking the bank, I grew my catmint from seed. I also grew catnip from seed. This would not have been a problem, except that the writing faded/washed away from the containers and I can’t tell the nip from the mint seedlings.

Last week, I got the brilliant idea to use the cats to tell them apart. They should have a strong reaction to catnip, and a not-so-strong reaction to catmint. That plan failed when they tried to eat ALL the seedlings. I’m now operating under the assumption that the taller, more blue-gray seedlings are mint and the shorter, more yellow-green seedlings are nip (and that my cats are equally attracted to them both).

Realizing that my seedlings didn’t have a chance of surviving to adulthood if I planted them directly into the rose bed, I transplanted a number of them into recycled cell packs to grow up big and strong. Sadly, I had to cage them with my compost sifter to keep Mr. Tibbs from nibbling on them. He did his best to snare himself a snack, but my lofty human ingenuity won in the end. Mwa-hah-hah!

I’m still a bit worried about getting the catmint established even once they are larger. I may have to lock my narcotics-crazed cats up for a day or so after planting until the bruised leaves heal and the tell-tale volatile oils evaporate. Or I can just distract them with the oodles of catnip I’m growing too. Of course, that all assumes that I can tell one Nepeta from the another!