Mint Condition

This being my first post to the blog, I suppose I should explain, with poise and extravagance, the purpose in my blogging. But... nah. You're smart. You'll figure it out.

I seem to have a vague memory of a vegetable garden in the backyard, but I'm going to go ahead and say I've never grown anything in my life. I mean, a plant. I've got hair and all that. But no plant. I'd been thinking about trying my luck with a mint plant, for a number of reasons:

• I'm itchin' to raise a nice garden of my own, someday... not anytime soon, as I'm renting, and the house I'm currently living at has no yard. It occurs to me that if I want to have a garden, I need to have at least some knowledge and some experience with growing plants. (Either that, or significant amounts of dough. However, I'm convinced that the joy in growing your own food is directly proportional to how dirty you get.)
• I'm a prolific mint tea drinker. There's one ingredient in mint tea. Guess what it is.
• Mint is easy. And by "easy," I mean "nearly impossible to destroy." We had a good chunk of mint growing in the front yard of a rental house in Greensboro, which was mistakenly mown down by two homeless guys who were returning a favor. The stuff grew back in a matter of weeks, and I don't mean there were little shoots of it; I mean, it grew back to full height. So, a good choice for a novice plant-mommy.

As fate would have it, on the first Sunday of spring this year (March 22), Blue Ridge Botanicals came to the Takoma farmer's market with plenty of herbs in tow. I actually had to make a decision between a couple types of mint, which surprised me, to be honest. I went with the Kentucky Colonel Spearmint. Some research via google later revealed that there is a wide variety of mint plants and flavors, including chocolate and pineapple. If I ever figure out where to get some pineapple mint, you can bet I'll be growing it by the bucketfull.

That is, assuming that I'm more or less successful. It's been with me for about a month, and it's definitely grown. I should've been taking pictures of it all along; better late than never, right?

My mom told me that if you cut off the top leaves, the plant will sprout more "branches" (pretty sure they're not called branches, but I am a novice), giving it a bushier look. I've done this on about half the plant, but it looks as though the plant has decided to go bushy on its own.

So far, it has only registered dislike on one occasion. As I rushed to catch the bus to work back in March, I decided to set the plant outside for the day. It was only as I reached the bus stop that I realized how cold it was outside. Yeah, the poor thing was not very happy about that; it wilted, but I set it inside and it perked up overnight. Not kidding. I went to bed, and in the morning it was all, "bring on the dang sunshine!" I was floored.

The plant hasn't grown as much as I've thought it should. I'm trying to decide what that means: should I fertilize it, or water it less, or water it more, or try to fight the rampant aphid population, or combat those random flies that seem to congregate around it... or is it just the heightened expectations of an overachieving plant mommy? I haven't fertilized it yet, because I'm a cheapskate. There's no composter here, and I don't feel like investing in one. We don't have a yard, either, not to mention that composters seem to be fairly expensive (at least for a poor intern like me). I suppose the better option would be to go invest in some fertilizer. Le sigh. When I have my own place, you better believe I will compost everything.

Also, aphids. Good Lawd. There was a mint plant at my folks' place that succumbed to an aphid infestation. So I was prepared for those. But... the cheapskate thing. What to do?

To be honest, I just pick them off with my fingernails about once a week. Yeah, I kill them. I feel bad about it, well, I sort of do... I feel obliged to protect my little baby, I did buy it and give it a home and all. At this point, the plant is doing so well that the aphids don't seem to be doing much harm, so I may... MAY... be a bit lax about it.

But probably not.

It is sort of fun, anyway. I like the notion that I am spending time with my plant, and that we are breathing out good air for each other. And the picking. I am a notorious picker, so the aphid removal is therapeutic for me.

The current project is propogating the plant. I want to start another plant, and I want to give one to Matt. Using information I got from this PDF on growing mint, I decided to cut off a few shoots and see what happens. I stuck one in a jar of water, and I stuck one in a yogurt pot full of soil, watered it liberally, and sealed it all up in a plastic bag. This was on Wednesday evening.

24 hours later, the mint in the water was doing just fine, but the shoot in the pot looked miserable. Knowing that wilting doesn't necessarily mean death, I decided at first that the thing was suffocating. I took the bag off and let it sit overnight, but it looked the same when I woke up on Friday morning. Screw it, said I, and plopped the thing down in some water before I went to work. When I came home, it was acting as if nothing had happened.

Also, as of this morning (Saturday, only 2.5 days later), I have visual evidence of a root!

I suppose I should also mention that I have been trying to grow an apple tree. Matt and I collectively saved 44 apple seeds, and I let them dry for a week or so. Just as an experiment, I put 22 of them in a moist paper towel in a baggie in the fridge, and I put 22 of them a half-inch deep in the yogurt pot with the mint plant. (Dumb idea, but I am trying to economize.) I guess another dumb thing I did was I mixed in about 5 seeds from a granny smith apple; the rest are pink lady. Not that it really matters, except granny smiths apparently need a warmer climate. Oh well, I'll let natural selection do its thang.

I doubt very much that the seeds in the pot will sprout. Turns out apple seeds need to be cold before they sprout (i.e. winter). Well, we'll see. Timetables vary from source to source; Wikihow says they'll sprout after a week of refrigeration, but these guys say that it takes three months.

I guess I should also mention that "wild" apple trees, such as the ones I'm attempting to grow, don't neccessarily grow fruit, and even then, they don't necessarily grow tasty fruit. Also, they take five or ten years to even begin to grow fruit. Turns out, interestingly, that commercial apple trees have to have their roots grafted? Or something? In order to keep them stunted. And then, they're pollinated specially to produce any given apple, like the pink lady or fuji or what have you. I'm not really expecting anything. But there's no harm in it; who ever heard of a problem with too many trees?