My Beautiful Mint Plant

Mint is an awesome and easy herb to grow but it can also take over your garden! This is why I plant my mint in containers. It keeps it contained and easy to get too. 

Usually my mint will come back every year, even in the container. However, with really cold and snowy winters lately, some of my mint has been killed off. However, this year my spearmint did come back! Although it took its sweet time coming back, I didn't see new growth on it till late May. By that time I had planted a peppermint plant in the same pot. 

Now they're growing together in the same pot and it's actually working out pretty well. Not to mention it makes for some nice green foliage in the garden. 

I've used the mint to flavor my water recently and to chew on some leaves to help with indigestion. 

I could also try drying some and saving it for peppermint tea in the winter! 

Mint is coming back strong! 5/10/13

My barrel of Mint that I planted last summer came back strong this spring and is already close to overflowing the rim of the whiskey barrel! I'll have to start using fresh mint again! 

The Mint is coming back!

The mint is coming back already! The whiskey barrel of mint I planted last summer has already produced a carpet of green! Inside is orange mint, peppermint and chocolate mint!

First Herbs of the season!

When I was buying my raspberry plants the other day I was surprised to see herbs and tomato plants out already! Since I live in Connecticut our outdoor growing season really doesn't start till May 15th. So as I browsed, I noticed a sale was going on so I looked for some stuff I needed. Ever since Starbucks took my regular tea away (orange blossom green tea) I've been drinking green tea with Spearmint, which is delicious! So even though I have peppermint, orange mint and chocolate mint, I don't have spearmint in my garden. So I put spearmint on my list of plants for 2013! As I searched, they had basil, rosemary, lavender and mint! Once I found the spearmint I decided to see if they had anything else. I hesitated buying basil because I collected a bunch of seeds from last years plant and hope to grow some from that. They had parsley but I've actually have never used it, so why grow it ! Then I saw cilantro, I love the spicy kick of cilantro especially over hot soup or in guacamole! So I picked up some cilantro as well. The mint and cilantro were only $2 a piece!!!! Not a bad deal, now lets just hope the warm weather keeps up!

January Thaw brings out some Mint!

After a few days of mild temps and foggy days it seems the January thaw is coming to an end. However with the few days of warmer weather I found some mint growing under old branches! This tends to happen a lot in January thaws, if it gets really warm some early blooming flowers like crocus and of course weeds. This being the first year I have mint growing in my backyard I was surprised to see the the green little leaves! Of course with snow forecast and much colder temps this mint will probably die back again.

Herb Garden!

Along with the expansion of my vegetable garden this year I have also decided to start my first herb garden! I came across peppermint at Lowes in early May and decided to buy that along with Orange Mint (which has a citrus taste to it!). After doing some research I learned mint is not only easy to grow and a perennial but also very invasive and hard to kill! The hard to kill and perennial part was great, the invasive part not so much! So I decided to plant the mint in a whiskey barrel to contain it. When I picked up the whiskey barrel at the store I also bought a chocolate mint plant. Although they started off small in the barrel, only two months later the whiskey barrel is over flowing with mint! So far I have dried some mint, had peppermint tea, made a simple mint syrup, made a Mint Julep and even just eaten the peppermint leaves!