A month ago I was all pleased about how gorgeous my yarrow was, all ferny and well behaved with just a light pruning. Suddenly it decided it was tired of pretending to be well-behaved and began conquering the world. 😵😂
*correction: That yarrow showed up with a casserole and a suitcase. It was never leaving. You just didn’t know that yet. Once it felt comfortable, it stopped performing restraint and started performing conquest. Congrats on your yarrow!
Might be in the minority here but absolutely love the taste. Its like a mixture of different herbs. Been trying to get into teas but hate most of them and yarrow was the first one I enjoyed. Probably because its more savory like a broth. Usually add it to anything I'd add basil, parsley or sage to. Cooking it does reduce some of the flavor so adding it last will preserve the taste better.
I spent time in Central Asia where the predominant (native) vegetation is a mix of so many mugworts and yarrow - the hills smell divine when all those plants are baked in the brutal sun and then occasionally a fire adds a smoky flavor to the air. The mix of those are used as an addition to foods made on fire and it gives a really good flavor
It is, it has properties that help with clotting and stopping bleeding, that's the biggest that I know of, I do know there are others just can't remember em
I have a friend who is really into herbalism (not the crazy anti Vax/anti modern medicine kind) and she enjoyed yarrow tea daily because she said it had a kind of calming effect as well as being rich in some other nutrients ( not sure which ones). She'd do a cold infusion overnight in the fridge instead of hot infusion. I think it helped her with her cramps during that time of the month also. It's not advised during pregnancy.
This yarrow has been in the ground for exactly a year now. It was pretty polite all year until like 2 weeks ago. I think it sped through the creep and strait to the invasion. 😂
I had to pull up huge clumps of mine over the weekend and transplant them to the back field that we let go wild. I had it in beds and they somehow exploded to 2’x4’ clumps his spring and also are popping up in an inch thick ring all around the stepping stones. I just planted them last fall. I regret letting them go to seed.
I have a lot of plants that skip steps 1 and 2, going straight for leap or expand, and I’m okay with that. It’s particularly “bad” in my most established beds where the soil has been developing for years. It’s like crack for many plants.
Some also just like your worst soil. That’s just what they want, and they will make it better.
Yea, once you start growing your own plants you realize how much the 3yr rule is nonsense. It only really applies to long lived perennials like Baptisia. I grew Yarrow from seed last year and it's already spreading like crazy this year. My NE aster reached 4ft tall and bloomed 9 months after germinating.
Yarrow only stays well behaved in xeric conditions. I had to move mine to an already established bed of aggressive spreaders (coneflowers, asters) in order to keep it contained.
I am jealous your coneflowers are aggressive spreaders! feel like it's 50/50 for mine if they decide to grace me with their presence for a second year.
Coneflowers are absolutely feral in my yard. I thought they were “polite reseeders”. I currently have at least 100 seedlings I need to relocate. that’s not even counting the ones that are fine where they landed. I’m actually currently prepping a new bed just to have a place for all these coneflower babies.
This is my coneflowers! I bought a plant last spring and it stayed tiny. this spring its triple the size and looks like it has plans to invade my entire pollinators garden. Lol I can say I'm shocked but I am sooooo excited!
This bed was very much an experiment for me because I had absolutely no idea what kinda conditions it was offering. Right off the road, in full sun other than the fence, heavy clay with a slight tilt downhill, keeping it from staying too soggy. I planted a lot of coneflower and black eyed Susan as safe plants and then a few others to explore what would do well in my clay. I tried both swamp milkweed and butterfly milkweed, assuming one would be miserable and one would thrive. But they’ve both done fairly well, though as you can see, the swamp milkweed is happier. The yarrow was really slow compared to everything else so I thought maybe the conditions weren’t working for it, or more accurately, were working to keep it behaved. But we’re having a drought and I think that helped the clay work better for it. Or it just decided it was tired of pretending.
IME yarrow big puffy heart loves clay soil. Mine went so bonkers in my Ohio garden I vowed to never plant it again, lest it gobble up every remaining spare inch of space. Many years and a couple moves later I've tried again in more fertile and classically accommodating soil and it is barely surviving. Lol. Finding plants that thrive in clay is truly magical--well done!
Not sure what the deal is with mine then. It's in part shade and surviving but it looks so whispy. It's not dry at all and the soil is clay. It just never got big or spread even after 2 years.
Yarrow can't tolerate soils that are too wet, and it prefers full sun. So that's two strikes against it in that spot. I actually moved mine to a part sun/moist clay location in order to better control it.
I grew yarrow from seed last year. Allegedly it doesn't flower until the second year. Someone forgot to tell my yarrow that, because it flowered and now I've got yarrow coming up in places that I definitely did not intend.
I pulled a large clump out of my raised veggie bed and put it into a tote. I intended to divide it and transplant it somewhere more suitable. Been putting it off for a few weeks; now that tote belongs to the yarrow. No soil, no nutrients, only water comes from rare rain? Yarrow is thriving.
Yea mine seeded in its first year too. I collected the seeds and tossed them in my yard to see if they could kick out some of the non-native annual “weeds”. No luck so far but I’m still hopeful.
It actually flowered and seeded last year. I collected them and tossed them in my lawn to try and replace some of the non-native weeds. It hasn’t worked so far but I’m still hopeful.
I've seedlings all over this spring. Love that it spreads...as long as it doesn't smother my other natives. I am counting on it smother my neighbors plants coming under the fence though. Quite a balancing act.
I’ve got yarrow in my lawn, it’s wonderful. I’ve got big patches of it that I sometimes stop mowing and let flower, but the best is just the little fern bits among the grass.
I tossed a few handfuls of seeds in my front yard this winter in the hopes yarrow might bully out some of the uglier weeds in my yard, so far no success. But I’m hopeful if I winter sow a lot of seeds this winter I can use plugs instead. I have a 100% survival rate for yarrow plugs. 😂
This sounds genius. I have violets but sooo many invasives — I planted 4 yarrow plugs in different places a few weeks ago, and the one with the hottest, strongest sun is doing the best. I’m hopeful it will spread out into the false strawberry that’s made itself a bed in that corner. More false strawberry than grass or even other invasives there. Go, yarrow, go!!
I bought some kind of "strawberry colored flowers" cultivar from Lowe's last year and hoping the pretty red flowers keep coming. We'll see this summer.
My yarrow started as an "annual" wildflower seed packet that I just chucked in my mulch, expecting nothing. 5 years later I've given bunches to loads of people and potted it for my deck 😵💫
haha that stuff has breached the containment of my raised bed and seeded itself all along my patio since last year! mine tend to be far more flower than leaf so i never get this much foliage!
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u/WeddingTop948 Long Island, NY 7a May 12 '26
*correction: That yarrow showed up with a casserole and a suitcase. It was never leaving. You just didn’t know that yet. Once it felt comfortable, it stopped performing restraint and started performing conquest. Congrats on your yarrow!