Solutions to perilla mint

What are the permaculture options to perilla mint.  I have lots of it that is displacing large areas that could be used to grow plants that my sheep would eat.  It’s really causing a problem.  Sheep won’t eat it, goats won’t eat it, chickens won’t touch it. Seems like everything knows it’s poisonous and won’t touch it.  How do I get rid of all this stuff to make the land more productive? I’d say spread out over my 10 acres, there are patches of it everywhere that would add up to 3 acres of unusable monoculture of invasive perilla mint.  It’s spreading every year and getting worse.

Oh wow, didn't know it was livestock toxic. Surprising since it's fine for humans!
Since it's an annual, keep it from re-seeding by mowing and it will eventually go away. How long depends on how much it has self seeded already. University of Mississippi says "Seed viability often remains high, with germination
studies indicating greater than 60 percent after more than 4
years of room-temperature storage." Not ideal, but the only thing you can really do "organically."
So maybe that's one mow per year to prevent seed formation, maybe two if it bounces back and threatens to flower and seed again.

There are some ideas in this thread. Tereza wrote that she feeds it to rabbits.

I am most envious of your perilla problem, wish it grew like a weed for me🥰

It's an annual in our climate and I dehydrate the leaves to make a tea and make kimchee with it.

I have food allergies and if I eat too much shellfish (which I love), before I have the meal, I boil up a batch of perilla tea with a generous handful of sliced fresh ginger and a small piece of slab sugar. Boil for just 15 minutes and allow the tea to steep.

Perilla has a multitude of other medicinal applications, not just allergies and asthma.

If there are any naturopaths and/or herbalists in your neighbourhood, they might welcome the opportunity to gather some of your perilla and if there are any Korean or Japanese restauranteurs they would pay well for organic fresh perilla leaves.

Megan Palmer wrote:I am most envious of your perilla problem, wish it grew like a weed for me🥰

It's an annual in our climate and I dehydrate the leaves to make a tea and make kimchee with it.

I have food allergies and if I eat too much shellfish (which I love), before I have the meal, I boil up a batch of perilla tea with a generous handful of sliced fresh ginger and a small piece of slab sugar. Boil for just 15 minutes and allow the tea to steep.

Perilla has a multitude of other medicinal applications, not just allergies and asthma.

If there are any naturopaths and/or herbalists in your neighbourhood, they might welcome the opportunity to gather some of your perilla and if there are any Korean or Japanese restauranteurs they would pay well for organic fresh perilla leaves.

Really? I’m too terrified to try it, it kills livestock. Surely it can’t be good for a person.

Are you sure that it is perilla that you have?

There are two types, one with green topped leaves and a purple underside and the other is purple top and bottom.

The leaves can grow very large, up to palm sized.

It has a distinct fragrant aniseed like flavour and definitely not poisonous to people.

Have any of your livestock died from eating it?

Megan Palmer wrote:I am most envious of your perilla problem, wish it grew like a weed for me🥰

It's an annual in our climate and I dehydrate the leaves to make a tea and make kimchee with it.

I have food allergies and if I eat too much shellfish (which I love), before I have the meal, I boil up a batch of perilla tea with a generous handful of sliced fresh ginger and a small piece of slab sugar. Boil for just 15 minutes and allow the tea to steep.

Perilla has a multitude of other medicinal applications, not just allergies and asthma.

If there are any naturopaths and/or herbalists in your neighbourhood, they might welcome the opportunity to gather some of your perilla and if there are any Korean or Japanese restauranteurs they would pay well for organic fresh perilla leaves.

We also, have been encouraging it...the bees love the flowers and we eat a lot of it in stirfries and even lightly sauted in salads...the flavor is very mild once cooked.
Have not tried it in kimchi nor a tea.  At the moment I'm letting it go to seed so it will spread.  I was wishing I had enough to dehydrate for another winter green powder.

Eric...I can see though, if it's taking up livestock pasture space, where you might want to discourage it but as someone mentioned maybe all thats needed is repeated mowing?

Edit to add that I did a quick search for it's toxicity and that does sound very serious for both cattle and horses especially in a drought!

Eric Hammond wrote:What are the permaculture options to perilla mint.  I have lots of it that is displacing large areas that could be used to grow plants that my sheep would eat.  It’s really causing a problem.  Sheep won’t eat it, goats won’t eat it, chickens won’t touch it. Seems like everything knows it’s poisonous and won’t touch it.  How do I get rid of all this stuff to make the land more productive? I’d say spread out over my 10 acres, there are patches of it everywhere that would add up to 3 acres of unusable monoculture of invasive perilla mint.  It’s spreading every year and getting worse.

I suggest pickling it, drying it, or harvesting it as a crop regularly since it's really important in Japanese and Korean cooking... I will provide you my favorite recipe for it, which is absolutely outstanding as a rice garnish, or with a hotpot... or in soba with some braised pork and fried tofu... this is a photo from the book "Cooking with Japanese Pickles" by Takako Yokoyama.

You can sell it to asian markets easily. It's in high demand and hard to import.

Megan Palmer wrote:Are you sure that it is perilla that you have?

There are two types, one with green topped leaves and a purple underside and the other is purple top and bottom.

The leaves can grow very large, up to palm sized.

It has a distinct fragrant aniseed like flavour and definitely not poisonous to people.

Have any of your livestock died from eating it?

Mine has the purple underside. My neighbor lost at least 5 goats to it before we figured out what was happening, he penned them up to where that was the only forage left.

The animals avoid it, but if forced they will eat it.  It really takes over and makes land unusable for grazing livestock. I could be far more productive with it gone.

Yeah, perilla is one of the crops I was really, really excited to establish here. I get that it can be invasive but the thread linked above has some good ideas about getting rid of it.
My rabbits love it and will eat as much as they can. This is the first I've ever heard of it being toxic to ruminants!! I'll take it under advisement, but it makes up a really significant part of their fodder, never had any problem with it.
I also eat as much as I can- Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cooking all use it in various ways, from fresh to pickled. Plus if you have the purple one, you can boil up the tea and make a super duper neon purple lemonade with it (add lemon juice or citric acid). It is the taste of summer!

I too have just done a search about perilla's toxicity to animals and it is indeed bad for ruminants.

However it appears that the seeds are the most toxic so the suggestion to mow it regularly ought to help.


Being an annual, after several seasons the plants will be disappear as they do not regrow from their roots.

The seeds sell for about ten cents EACH on Etsy.  It can be a heck of a cash crop if you have a good variety.

This stuff takes over any new clearing in my forested areas and moves in on most of my garden beds. Gotten really aggressive over the last two years after never really showing up before.

The smell is so good I don't want to get rid of it completely (I'm similarly minded towards Japanese Honeysuckle).

My goats refuse to touch the stuff, but I didn't know feeding to rabbits was a possibility. I'm going to try a small batch on my Californian/Silver Fox does and see how they respond. Will report back!

What could help is shading it with winter wheat or rye. That will keep it covered till may. Then flatten it with a plank with ropes on both ends. this bends down the stalks. It won't kill it immediately. Then put many pumpkin transplants in there that will cover the wheat stalks rotting down and keep the seeds from sprouting... Hopefully. If succesful at a small patch keep going at it.

I heard about shiso being used in cuisines so I bought a pack of seeds to plant two years ago. The taste and smell wasn't what I expected and I let the plants be. This year volunteers come up in very acidic soil, in the shade of my yew and oak trees mostly, where nothing else would grow. They have their roles in reducing erosion and feeding soil microbes in those spots so it'snot a bad thing to me.  It seems that they get competed out where soil is richer with more optimal pH range. I am wondering if places with perilla taking over could indicate something is off balance? In that case, remediation such as liming will bring back more species to keep it in check.

Hmm. At my old place it would grow in the cracks in the concrete, or a spoonful of sand on top of the concrete, so I don’t know if pH matters that much.

I agree with R Scott, they seem to be very tenacious plants and come up in the darndest places. I let the plants go to seed at the end of the season and shake them to scatter seeds, and instead of coming up in the beds they'll often focus on the gravel areas on the edge of the garden or in the spaces in the walls that border the beds. They come up in my potted plants but seem to prefer the ones with crummy dirt like figs and succulents rather than the rich dirt.

You could pick it and sell it in an honour farmstand.  And you could sell starts too, because clearly it is sought after by some.