Minting all the way..

I am proud to say that when it comes to our culinary mint needs we are self-sufficient with our garden produce.Mint is very easy to grow and it grows well even in poor quality soil.One inherent characteristic of mint is that it propagates very fast and produces branches profusely. If left alone it might even taken over the entire garden.So it is suggested to harvest the stems often at frequent intervals and keep them confined if grown at home.Our garden's mint bed is more than three years old. It is a 2 feet by 1 feet wide space just near by the garage and has provided us with a constant supply of mint leaves whenever we need it. Our culinary requirements for mint are only occasional but when used we use them in ample quantities.

The maintenance effort required for growing mint is very minimal.The only task required is to ensure that the mint bed stays moist to get good healthy leaves.When we do the harvesting we take care of weeding the bed too. 

Mint bed - year 2012

Once a year we scrape off the entire mint bed leaving the roots alone in place.The roots underneath start developing new shoots leading to much better harvests.But unfortunately during this re-growing period, we have to rely on the shop bought mint leaves but the best of the stem cuttings from this bunch will be planted in the mint bed so that the mint population increase quickly.

Some days back, we had to resort to the shop bought mint leaves since the mint bed rejuvenation was happening. Normally we would select and plant the stem cuttings immediately after the kitchen use but due to a family trip we could not do it on the same day. The stems do not propagate if kept refrigerated and cannot be kept outside too as they will be dry by the time we come back. So we followed an alternate method for propagating mint cuttings without planting it in soil immediately.

The trick is to soak the cuttings in a bowl of water and leave it in the sunlight. By the end of a week, we could see tiny roots developing in the cuttings and the stems were very healthy. Some had developed new leaves too.

The stems were then planted in the ground. Even though its been a week, you can see the stems posing fresh and healthy looks.





We also have mint growing in a foam box.This is a recent development and set up as a back up supply when the mint bed is rejuvenating.It hasn't fully developed though as much as we expect it to be.

While growing in a container(in this case, a foam box) one should also keep in mind of the fact that mint is a very invasive plant(as said earlier) with very vigorous roots and if grown in a container,the roots grow by the edges of the pot and try to expand the boundary. Look at our foam box and could you spot a mint branch that is doing this already?




We would like to make up our mind this one instance and leave this branch as it is by calling them smart as they are already 'thinking out of the box'. But to save the box we are going to strongly 'discourage' the other branches from peeping out.