Garden Plants You Might Want to Toss in the Trash

When you’re pulling everything out of the garden at the end of the season, some plants are best placed in the trash rather than your compost pile, as they’ll easily spread about your property where you don’t want them. Let’s look at some of them.

Chives and other alliums

There is a lot to love about chives; their natural hardiness makes them easy to grow and a great choice for northern locations. In exchange for a small corner of the garden, chives will happily return in full force year after year, providing valuable (and attractive) blossoms for early pollinators. As chives spread rapidly, and you’ll soon have enough for yourself and multiple neighbors. 

But it’s that “spreading rapidly” nature of chives—and other members of the allium family—that you need to be careful with. If you casually toss the spent stalks or seed heads on your compost pile, you could inadvertently set off a process that finds you eventually chasing down loose alliums all over your property. Imagine using a weed trimmer to remove chives that repeatedly come up between the cracks of a brick patio—and then ask me how I know!

Bulbs are perhaps even worse, as they can germinate after even years of dormancy. And allium members are generally not suitable for livestock or pets, so it’s definitely worth your while to make sure any allium stays in the garden where it belongs. Keep them out of the compost pile, and plan on sending cleanup debris from these plants straight to the trash.

Mint

Herbs add such a pleasant touch to any garden; they’re interesting to look at and smell nice, they’re useful for cooking and easy to grow. In the case of mint, you may have noticed just how very easy it is to not only grow, but also to propagate additional plants. Mint spreads primarily via below-soil rhizomes. Without regular attention, mints can easily expand far beyond the patch of garden you allotted for them. For this reason, you’ll need to be careful with them when you’re cleaning up in the fall, and don’t let the mint get loose where you don’t want it!

Raspberries and Blackberries

While the wild versions of these plants are fun to find during a nature walk, it’s hard to beat cultivated raspberry and blackberry varieties for the sheer size and number of berries. But you also need to be careful what you wish for; both of these popular members of the rose family propagate not only through seeds in the berries, but also, like mint, through their underground runners. These plants can rapidly spread, and you may find yourself pruning considerably to keep them under control. Take care not to let them get away.

Barberries

You should also take care with your landscaping plants. Barberry bushes offer some wonderful colors, including bright yellows, pale pinks, and brilliantly beautiful reds. Barberries are popular because they’re attractive, super hardy, shade tolerant, and can adapt to a variety of soil conditions. Deer also leave them alone (the plants are sharp). But for these reasons, Barberry plants are also fairly invasive, particularly in wooded areas. In fact, the state of Pennsylvania recently issued a ban on the sale of the plant, except for sterile examples. If Barberries get loose on your property, it can turn into quite a challenge to regain control, so take extra care with pruning and removal of plant material from this shrub.

Diseased plants

Finally, make an effort to get any diseased plant material from any species into the trash and not in your compost pile. Powdery mildew, black spot, various types of wilts, rust, cankers—when your garden is done for the winter and you’re clearing beds and gathering up finished plant material, dispose of any leaves and stems that show attributes of these problems and put them right in the trash.

Your garden is going to look great thanks to all your hard work during the fall cleanup—just be careful not to inadvertently give yourself more work with careless handling of those fast-spreading varieties.

Daniel Johnson is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer and professional photographer and the co-author of over a dozen books. See his garden and animal photography at foxhillphoto.com.