One of the most common and popular aromatic plants is mint. Mint is a plant known for centuries for its pleasant and intense smell, which is why it is used for many purposes. One of them is to use it to flavor different dishes or for infusions, but it also has many good health properties and is also used in cosmetics. For this reason, it is very common to have it grown in pots in our homes. Thus, if you want to have one in your home, read this EcologíaVerde article carefully, in it we are going to talk about the potted mint plant care.
Characteristics of the mint plant
Mint (mint) it’s a genus of herbaceous plants perennials of the labiatae family, which includes several species and hybrids. The shape of its leaves is as attractive and varied as its flavors. They include plants with a very cosmopolitan distribution, found almost everywhere in the world.
The Mint It is a plant that has many uses in homes. Serve as a condiment in our recipes, make infusions or give a fresh touch to different desserts. There is one wide variety of mints different, such as Tashkent spearmint (Mentha spicata ‘Tashkent’), peppermint (peppermint) or chocolate mint, since its leaves are brown and have a flavor similar to cocoa, the Mentha arvensis or one of the best known, mint (mentha spicata).
Potted Peppermint Plant Care Guide
As we said, it is a long-stemmed herbaceous plant that has a high tendency to grow laterally, both in its surface and buried or underground, through its stolons or lateral shoots. For this reason, the best way to make it grow large and dense is to plant it in the garden soil, but if we do not have the space, we can have it at home, inside or outside, following these Potted Mint Plant Care TipsYou will see that it is a very easy plant to care for.
Light and temperature for mint
In the moment of grow mint in a potyou have to find a place that has a good lighting that allows its growth. The development of the plant needs a constant supply of nutrients, so it is important to select a good organic fertilizer or the most natural one possible. It is recommended to keep it at a temperature between 15ºC and 20ºC during the early stage of its development.
Choosing the right pot for mint
It is also vitally important to select well the mint pot, because it will be the place where we are going to grow it, since being a plant that grows horizontally, it is advisable to use a pot that is wide and about 20 cm deep, to grow mint well. In addition, it is vital that there is good drainage, discover in this other EcologíaVerde article all about Drainage in pots.
How to water potted mint
The mint watering It must be regular and abundant, mainly during its development period during spring and summer. This also makes the plant bloom at the right time, without being early or late, and that the quality of the aroma and flavor of its leaves is correct. By watering it, we can take advantage of and use a fertilizer that provides the nutrients it needs during the mentioned growing season.
mint bloom
The normal thing is that mint plant bloom at the beginning of the summer, a moment that we can take advantage of to cut it and leave it about five centimeters above the soil of the pot so that it can grow again. With the use of fertilizers and irrigation, we will be able to maintain the plant until the beginning of autumn, but when the cold arrives, the aerial part of the mint will die, although not its underground stems, which will develop again in the spring.
How to prune a mint
Given this horizontal growth, it is also important to mint pruning to control the size of this plant in a pot and take the opportunity to sanitize it by removing some leaves, which will favor the growth of new shoots and future blooms.
How to reproduce mint plant
Now that you know how to take care of a mint in a pot, you may be interested in knowing how to reproduce it, since it grows so much it is very easy and it is a plant that should be kept at home for all its mentioned uses, so it does not hurt to have more of one
At the moment when the pots are very saturated, it is possible to rejuvenate the plant and play mint. This consists of removing some of the roots of the plant. We will cut these roots in half, separating the endings, and we can plant them again using new soil or compost. In addition, mint is a plant that easily propagated by cuttings. Cuttings are a simple way to reproduce plants in general, so it is a matter of putting stems of about 10 cm with moist compost in pots or placing the cuttings in water until they develop roots.
Other Potted Mint Plant Care Tips
It’s advisable use fresh mint, although if this is not possible, the leaves can also be preserved when the plant dies. For this, we can collect the sprouts, wash them well, dry them in a vegetable centrifuge, cut them into small pieces and place them in a container, for example an ice bucket type, we will fill this container with water and freeze it. With this way, we can take an ice cube when we need mint to cook.
If what we want is grow different varieties of mintwe must do it separately, since otherwise many of the flavors and aromas of each variety will fade when mixed a lot.
In the pot, we can keep moisture mulching its surface, for example, with pine bark, damp moss or damp, crushed leaves. This will help keep the water from evaporating as quickly but the roots from getting waterlogged, if the pot has adequate drainage.
Below you will find a video about this mint care guide.
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