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So when trying to grow mint
You will see that there are a lot of common varieties of mint
That are available for you to purchase at your garden store
So let's review some of these varieties sweet mint is the most common type of
mint that you can find
It's got large leaves and is pretty much an all-around versatile mint
Then you have spearmint which is used for a lot of
recipes that you would see You have peppermint which can be used to prepare
peppermint teas
and a lot of other drinks and then you have the flavored mint
which are very special varieties of mints like chocolate mint
are pineapple mint which can add
minty flavors to a lot of things Now here's a little trivia for you
If a recipe doesn't specify which mint to use
What would be the mint that you'd use? Alright...ready for the answer?
if you guessed Spearmint, then you're absolutely right
When people just say mint, they mean Spearmint
Or just listen to your taste buds and use the mint that you like the most!
So let's take a look at each of these varieties in detail
Sweet Mint is bred for larger leaves
And a mint flavor that is pretty much
a neutral flavor that can be used in a lot of dishes
For preparing drinks, teas, its commonly available
and easy to grow Peppermint is a type of mint which is a
type of hybrid mint and it has a very high
menthol content so it feels more like
your chewing gum or toothpaste kind of mint
very intense flavor and great for making
a lot of drinks spearmint is the most common variety of mine that you will use
a very very versatile mint it can be used in a lot of
kitchen recipes can be used to flavor your drinks
your teas and it has a lot of health benefits
so if you're looking to will start growing anyone can of mint
I would highly recommend that you start growing spearmint
it's very easy to grow
and a very versatile mint Flavored mints like
chocolate mint, apple mint, pineapple man
have any specific purposes So if you have a recipe that requires certain flavors
and mint this may be a good thing to start growing in your garden
and you can also use flavored mints in a lot of drinks
and the impart very special flavors to those drinks
Mint is generally never had grown from seeds
The reasons being its not only very difficult to grow them
Because their germination rate is not so good the plants that grow from them
do not resemble their parents so it's not a good idea to grow them from seed
instead what you can do is take some cuttings
like these here and put them in a bowl of water
and then add some dirt in it and that encourages the mint
shoots to give out these roots that you can see.
So as soon as you have some roots here
You can transplant these into pots
And they will start growing just like a new mint plant
So if you have friends that can give you mint cuttings
that's the easiest way to propagate mint
Now if you do not have mint cuttings
you can buy mint plants or herbs
from your local garden center and then plant them
To plant mint you need to use containers that are wide
and not deep because mint sends out
sprawling wines which will go all around your container
So a container of this size is is good enough for growing mint
So there are two Spearmint
plants that we have here
which we are planting in this pot
So we take out the plant from the given pot
And then we plant it on to our wider container
And you can try to loosen the roots on the bottom a little bit so they start
growing in a better way but even if you just place them
around the container an add some dirt around it
they should do a fairly good job
Mint is a very invasive plant
So never ever plant mint
directly on the ground I don't see any reason why you should be growing mint on
the ground
because it will just take over your yard and
all the plants around it Its a very vigorous
and invasive plant so most pf the time you would grow
mint in containers like these
And they should last for at least a year or so in a container of this size
this is another container that you can use it is slightly deeper
so again wide as well
So great to grow mint and we will be planting
our second spearmint plant in this container
So I'm using a bagged potting mix here
that I got from a local garden center
And then what I do is I add some perlite to it
To increase the volume You could either add Perlite or Vermiculite
and then take the plant and just remove just a little bit of the soil from below
to stimulate the roots a little bit and then add the remaining soil
around the plant and this is pretty much the perfect size
container for growing mint It's not too deep
And its wide enough for the plant to send out its vines
And once the planting is done always remember to water your plant
make sure it gets a nice soaking
before you set it out
Mint best grows in either partial shade
or light sun
Although you can grow mint in full Sun
i've seen that the best mint grows in partial shade
so I'm using this vertical growing
rack here and I'll probably do a video of this
cheaply available vertical growing solution
that I recently bought and you can grow a lot of herbs
vegetables in this storage rack
And here you see the two mint plants that we just planted
now once every year you need to prune and maintain you mint plant
so what does that mean?
After about a year
your mint will have grown so invasive that it won't have any more
space to grow
So it will not produce the good quality mint that you expect it to produce
so what you do here is your is you find some small plants
which you separate out from this big plant
and then start it in a new container
so here you can see one we can try to find a couple more
that's a good one that has good roots
and nice healthy leaves so you need to find
candidates like this one maybe find like
4 or 5 and then start growing them in a separate container
now some people like to do this every year
some people do it every two years I would say just go by what you feel
if you feel your mint plant is crowded and is not producing good leaves
then it's time to re-pot you can either
plant them in the same container by using new soil
or you can use the cuttings
or the plants and plant them and a brand new container
so in our case we will be planting our mint plant
that we separated from the parent plant
We're gonna to plant all these plants in this container
adding fresh potting mix
and once you add the potting mix I'd like to use a
little bit of
extra perlite which improves
the oxygen that reaches the roots, it improves porosity
and I've noticed that the more porous the medium
the better the plants grow
and what you do is just plant these mint plants
just like that and what this will do is that it will give
the mint plant a lot more space
It will give the roots a lot more space to grow
which means that you will be getting a lot of new offshoots
from your mint plan that you can start using right away
So I am planting four of these plants here
and mint grows throughout the year so the mint plant grows and produces
these nice-looking
mint leaves you can cut these stems these mint stems
and use them and what will happen is after
just a few weeks the mint plant will continue to send more shoots
and then you can keep harvesting them
So mint is a real joy to grow
there's nothing that tastes like fresh mint from your garden
Its a very nice herb that you can easy grow
in your garden and it really requires minimal
care the only insect I see on the mint plant sometimes are slugs
and sometimes I see some spider mites but all in all
they've not been a real problem to my mint plants at all
I always get nice healthy mint leaves and as you can see
And as you can see I've chopped off the tops of these you know these mint leaves
and taken them and in just a few weeks you can see that the mint plant has
sent out the small shoots
And once these small shoots grow
you should see that the mint plant will grow back to almost what it was
when you started harvesting them so all in all a very easy plant to grow
so do you grow mint? Let me know what variety of mint you grow
I'll see you again soon...Happy Gardening
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