Growing Mint in Northeast Florida Herb Gardens
(Mentha)
Mint is an easy to grow perennial herb plant, just perfect for beginning gardeners. Plant them in any well composted, moist soils, and they are happy to spread just about anywhere and everywhere in the garden! In fact, Mint herbs grow so well, gardeners often keep them contained in raised beds or decorative pots. Just remember that Mint herbs love moist soils, and potted plants tend to dry out quickly. So when planting your mint into containers, consider adding soil moisture retention granules like ” Soil Moist® ” to your container’s potting mix or using Miracle Grow’s “Moisture Retention Potting Mix®” to help keep the moisture level in the soil high for your mint herb pots.
Give your mint plants a half day of shade in the Northeast Florida, Jacksonville and St. Augustine area garden. Full sun all day is just too much during the heat of the summer here in our hot subtropical climate.
There are allot of different selections of Mint plants for the Florida landscape and the flavors and scent of each selection vary widely. When it comes to Mint herbs, when you’ve seen one, you definitely have not seen them all. Mint plants are promiscuous, they cross pollinate readily with nearby mint plants. That means that seeds grown of mint, even from the same plant, will vary in appearance and flavor widely from the mother plant. (similar to human offspring, your children may resemble one parent or the other, or maybe a grandparent) It is for this reason that mint is propagated vegetatively, rather than from seed.
In order to keep the flavor, scent and foliage characteristics of the mother plants, root and stem cuttings or divisions are necessary.
Renowned horticulturist Gibbons said this of mint plants, ” If the first sprig of wild mint doesn’t exactly delight you, keep searching, and eventually you will find a mint that is exactly tailored to your tongue.”Mint flavors include chocolate, orange, pineapple, apple, peppermint, spearmint, and much more! If you’re anything like me you will want to try them all!