The Best Places to Plant Mint

Freshly harvested mint adds a bright pick-me-up flavor to cool summer drinks.

Mint has such a reputation for aggressive spreading that many gardeners joke that the best place to plant it is in your neighbor's yard. You can put mint's fast-spreading nature to positive use in your own yard to fill in difficult-to-mow areas or keep its growth in check by harvesting it frequently for a winter's worth of mint tea. The best place to plant it is where you can most enjoy its heavenly scent.

Rich Moist Soils

The absolute ideal growing conditions for mint are rich, moist soils and full sun to light shade, advises the Oregon State University Extension Service. Planted in these ideal conditions, mint may become riotously aggressive and spread in dense patches, threatening to subsume your yard. Mint spreads by horizontal runners just under and along the soil surface. This makes mint very easy to propagate; simply procure a slip with roots and a piece of a horizontal runner from a friend willing to part with a piece, plant this in your garden soil and water it in. Mow the edges of the mint patch, or harvest it frequently to dry for tea, to keep it somewhat restrained.

In-Ground Containers

To grow mint outside in your garden without it taking over the neighborhood, plant it in containers with complete bottoms and a few small drainage holes, then sink these containers into the soil, suggests the Oregon State University Extension. Leave an inch or two of the container lip sticking up above the soil, to help deter those horizontal spreading runners. Some gardeners also use deep, bottomless tubes as in-ground containers, such as piece of stove pipe at least 18 inches long. Wrapping the containers in weed cloth before sinking them in the ground will further deter the spread of roots and runners but continue to allow adequate drainage.

Indoors

Plant a pot of mint indoors to enjoy its bright clean scent each time you walk by and to keep fresh sprigs handy for adding to cold drinks or garnishing dinner plates. Herbs grown indoors will simply need light and well-drained soil, advises the West Virginia University Extension Service. Keep your mint containers in a sunny window or add some artificial grow lights in the darker winter months. Cutting mint back to its base will encourage new, strong regrowth, as will subjecting the plant to a light frost in the fall before bringing it indoors. If the plant gets too leggy, discard all but the strongest few shoots with attached roots and repot these in fresh potting soil.

Hard-to-Mow Locations

Mint's aggressive spreading habits can be put to good use by planting in areas where other plants don't do well or which are hard to mow. Commercial mint growers in Michigan put wet muck soils, inappropriate for other field crops, to work planting acres of mint for flavored oil production, according to the Michigan State University. Mint will also thrive in similarly wet patches in your yard as well as in partial shade and on slopes, creating a pleasant green bushy cover that will still bestow all the culinary and olfactory benefits of mint planted in more productive garden soils. Planting mint in the un-mowable margins of your property will help free up your prime garden soil for fussier crops.

References

• Oregon State University Extension; Hints for Growing Mint; Carol Savonen
• Michigan State University; Mints in Michigan
• West Virginia University Extension Service; Growing Herbs in the Home Garden