Dr. Nate Storey: Hey, this is Nate Storey with Bright Agrotech, and today I'm going
to talk with you a little bit more about mint.
Mint is a really great crop.
It's in high demand everywhere you go.
Bars love it, consumers love it.
Especially during the summer, a lot of things are made with mint.
For that reason, a lot of growers really love growing this crop, and they can get a lot
of money out of this crop.
Some things to know about mint, if you're starting from seed, you're usually like 14,
16 days for germination, another 5 to 6 weeks, at least, before you can transplant that seedling,
and then you're looking at, at least 6 weeks, if not 7 or 8, sometimes, to get it to the
point where you can start harvesting it, so it's a slow starter.
The thing is, once it's growing, you can cut it, and cut it, and cut it, and cut it, and
just keep cutting it, until it basically gets so big it barely fits in the tower anymore.
In that regard, it's one of those ... It's kind of an investment crop.
A faster way to do that, or a way to speed that up, is to just start with cuttings.
Cuttings can be a great way to go with mint, because it roots out, it's very responsive
to cloning, it roots out really fast, and you can transplant it really quick, and get
towers going really, really fast.
You can also divide towers, once they get a little overgrown as well, so lots of options
there for propagation.
As far as the crop itself, it likes cooler temperatures, typically.
Good full sun.
We're typically talking a little bit longer day length, 14 to 18 hours, somewhere in that
range, and it likes a little bit more of a neutral pH, so it doesn't like going super
acidic, like some of the other herbs do.
Mint does pretty darn well in 6, 5, 7, so mid 6s, ideally.
If you're running it with a lot of other stuff, you just kind of shoot for the mid 6s, and
they stay pretty happy.
It is a vigorous grower.
It grows really, really fast once it builds up some root mass, so once it has some root
mass, it will just keep growing, and growing, and growing.
You can cut it back to the crown with no fear of really hurting the plant significantly,
it just takes a little longer to grow out again.
In that regard, complete harvests are a total possibility with this crop, and then you just
regrow from the crown.
Mint seed is not particularly expensive, and there's a lot of it.
Mint seeds, when you get them, are super, super tiny, and once the mint starts to flower,
it produces a lot of seed, and so, yeah, I mean the seed is priced pretty well.
If you're starting from seed, you'll get a lot of plants out of a fairly small packet
of seed.
It's not a great germinator.
It's a little slow, and it can be a little tough to grow from seed, so that's one thing
to keep in mind.
That's one reason why most people, they may start all of their initial plants from seed,
but then, in the end, they almost always go to cloning their healthy plants, to get the
materials for new towers, or new plants.
Really, kind of an attractive crop.
This one's showing a little bit of a deficiency, but it can turn a really, really rich green,
and some of these larger leaf varieties, like this, are really quite pretty.
They're great for garnishes.
They look beautiful in drinks, and they're, of course, great for cooking with, when you
get much larger leaves, there's a lot less prep work to get the plant ready to use, for
chefs and for bartenders, that kind of thing.
It's a pretty crop.
It grows in very thick on the tower, so the towers are attractive.
If you're considering live sales, it's a great crop in that regard, and the taste is really
quite good, if you get it right.
Now, the thing to remember with mint is that, some conditions cause it to be a little bit
more bitter, than have some of those really good aromatic compounds that give mint it's
flavor, so you want to kind of watch your environmental conditions, make sure it's not
getting too hot, and staying too hot, or you'll end up with a lot of bitterness.
Make sure it's not growing too fast.
Make sure that it's getting challenged every now and then, to get those flavors going,
but not so much that it just turns into a bitter mess.
It requires a little bit of management in some systems.
In some systems, it grows great from day one, no management at all, things are just perfect
for mint.
Speaker 2: What about pests?
Dr. Nate Storey: Mint is not particularly pest prone.
You will see aphids show up from time to time.
Thrips can be an issue, here and there.
One of the nice things about mint, is that it just doesn't suffer from a lot of the pest
problems that other herbs do.
There are a lot of varieties of mint.
Not all of them are true mints, OK?
You've got your spearmints, and your peppermints, and your garden mints, and your sweet mints.
Garden and sweet mints are typically kind of the same thing.
Then you've got all of these novelty things, like chocolate mint, and, I don't even know,
there's a lot of them.
Orange mint, and all of these different types of mint.
A lot of those are actually not true mints.
A lot of those have mint like flavors, combined with other flavors, but in the end, they're
not a true mint.
When we talk about mints, we're talking about spearmint, peppermint, and then like, sweet
or garden mint.
Primary customers for mint are going to be restaurants, bars and grocery stores.
A lot of consumers really like mint.
It tends to be kind of a seasonal thing with consumers, but in bars you can sell mint year
round.
They're always making drinks with mint.
It's super popular, and if you have good mint, you'll have no shortage of customers, when
it comes to bars.
Grocery stores also sell a lot of mint.
If you've seen mint there, it does not do well with being cut, and being stuck in a
clamshell, so if you walk into a store with a live tower of mint, you can offer them a
real, real compelling product to be selling to their customers, because the stuff in the
clamshells, it is a shadow of what it once was.
It does not have the flavor, doesn't have the appearance.
It looks like crap.
Whenever someone has the opportunity to cut their own live brand new, fresh mint, they're
going to take that opportunity.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you want more information on this crop, check out our recommended crops list, and
check out our blog.
We talk about this crop in detail there.
Thanks so much for watching, and if you find value in these videos, please do subscribe.