Many kinds of mint herb exist today, and the most popular of these varieties are peppermint and spearmint. Other varieties of this plant exist and examples of which are the golden apple mint and orange mint. Some people think that setting up their own mint herb garden is expensive, but that is not the case. One can set up his own garden on a budget, and it is best to grow the variety that is easily accessible in your area and plant the mint flavor that caters to you best.
Peppermint and spearmint are examples of hardy perennials. A garden with these plants is truly very productive for they easily spread on every corner of a garden without help. This creates value for the money you are to spend when producing your own mint garden. Peppermint (Mentha piperita) contains square stems and its leaves have a purplish tinge. This plant is tall and shallow-rooted and like all the others, it spreads very rapidly. It also has light lavender colored flowers which appear as terminal spikes abundantly abloom throughout peppermint’s season. The herb’s maximum growth reaches three feet tall.
Another kind of mint herb is spearmint (M. spicata). The plant can reach two feet in height when fully grown and it has square stems like peppermint with curled leaves that are filled with veins. Its color ranges from light purple to white and its spike-like appearance is two to four inches in length. This flower starts to grow early in summer to fall.
Golden apple mint is another type of the mint herb and it has a more subtle flavor as compared to spearmint. The plant’s dark green leaves have touches of gold and together with it grows its light purple flowers. Orange mint (also known as bergamot mint) is best known for its orange-like scent. This mint variation contains reddish green leaves with purple edges while its flowers are lavender in color.
Growing this type of herb will truly save you money. Planting the root division to gain the maximum flavor of the herb is the best way to start. Growing a small number of this herb can go a long way for this type is inclined to spread all over the garden. To better control them, you can enclose them in a container to put its roots in place. This is to keep the roots from wandering off all over the ground.
While it is true that these plants can be grown anytime in the growing season, spring or fall is still the best period to plant them to achieve faster root division. Putting an 18 to 24-inch distance per row and two or three inches apart from each other will result to better growth. These plants will also save you from spending too much on fertilizer for there is no need to add more fertilizers on mints during the middle of the growing season; they can live without them. Although, you must take note that spearmint and peppermint prefer moist soil so a lot more watering should be done to these mint types in the garden until the roots are properly divided.
Diseases like verticillium wilt and mint rust are some of the weaknesses of this herb. To prevent your mint garden from acquiring the said diseases, you should carefully take off from the bed the dead stems and leaves before the arrival of winter season.
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