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How to grow mint in your garden

Growing healthy herbs will give you a fragrant garden and garnish.
ideas and tips on how to grow mint in your garden

Every now and then, when a recipe calls for something that we should have growing in our garden but don’t, we’re forced to face our own shortcomings. I’m sure I could be excused, though, for not having mint, on the grounds that it’s very much a double-edged sword – unless you’re vigilant. Plant it in the ground and you can admire it the first year, worry about it the second and try to stop it climbing in the bedroom window the third.

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I planted some in a pot a couple of years ago and chucked it under a palm tree where it sulked from lack of sun, water and social contact, and finally – sometime before I went  to pick some for the lamb rack recently – died. Astonishing. I must be one of the few gardeners, worldwide, who can kill mint without even trying. Any gardener will tell you mint is one of the easiest herbs to grow, but like teenagers, it needs boundaries. The trick is to prevent it colonising the neighbours’ gardens, so most people grow it in a pot.

Give up your vision of a rustic terracotta pot filled with luscious mint and bung it into a large plastic pot with the bottom cut out. Then, sink the pot into the ground so you can’t see it. The theory is that the plastic pot will contain the plant without it becoming root bound. Pot it into rich potting mix and give it a decent feed. It’ll be as tall as the house in no time and next year you can divide it in two – or four – and start another pot  somewhere else.

My mint languished under a tree, so obviously some sun is a prerequisite, along with plenty of water and mulch. It will grow in shade, but it’ll get leggy, floppy and taste like a watered-down version of real mint. If this happens, cut bits off, put them in a glass of water and wait for roots to grow. It’ll only take a minute. Plant your cuttings (in pots!) and keep them moist and well fed with a soluble plant food.

Evidently mint plants are susceptible to the rust fungus Puccinia menthae. It’s possible mine may have succumbed to this, but I didn’t go near it often enough to notice. Symptoms generally show between spring and autumn with the stems becoming pale and distorted, and dusty orange spots appearing on the stems and leaves. You can bin the leaves or remove whole stems as soon as signs of rust are spotted. Trimming your mint back to about 3cm high may result in new, rust-free growth, but really it’s probably easiest simply to buy a new plant. Or several.

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Why limit yourself when there are close to 20 different varieties of mint? You can easily become a mint authority and connoisseur. First rule, though, is to keep your varieties pure by planting mixed varieties as far apart as possible, otherwise they’ll cross pollinate and you won’t know what you’ve got. Spearmint, peppermint, curled or curly mint are the most common, but there are also hybrid varieties of mint such as apple, lavender, orange, pineapple, chocolate, ginger, bergamot, banana and more.

Vietnamese mint is a clump-forming water plant, growing up to a metre tall, often in boggy ground. In the autumn, it grows small star-shaped, pale pink flowers and a distinctive flavour that enhances Asian food. Then there’s catmint – not a true mint, but huge fun if you have a cat that likes it, for both the cat and you watching it.

Despite its negative qualities, mint can look really good in the garden. It’s a vibrant, lush plant if you look after it. Frequent cutting keeps it on its toes. As with basil and other flowering herbs grown for their leaves, remove the flowers as they appear and pinch back the stems to encourage growth. If by chance your mint does colonise the rest of your and your neighbours’ gardens, there is a solution – move house.

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