2.0 Growing a Pudina (Mint) plant
-The realist Urban farmer
Greetings!
How does a masala chai with some fresh mint sound to you? An absolute delight,especially when its right from your backyard!
After a couple of tomato saplings I tried my hand at mint plants (which were a little quicker to grow and needed a little less patience) this time around!
After hearing from people as well as a lot of videos online about growing mint from the scraps bought from the market, i tried it the ‘scraps to plant’ way thrice. Turns out, it only works with some of it, say 3 out of 10, and most of it dies(sigh). So there are 2 ways of going about growing mint, one from cutting of mint plants and other from seeds bought from the store.
UPDATE: A throwback to my first blog post; I also planted a few seeds on the day of posting the blog, and in about 15 days, I have tiny seedlings popping out.
How to grow a Mint Plant from scraps
Things required:
- Mint grows in any pot size and spreads out, so a pot suitable to your space should work, i prefer a bigger pot of about 15 inches wide so as to get more of it spread out. Layering to be done with soil as mentioned in the first blog of this series.
- Buy fresh mint from a local vendor rather than a supermarket about 15–20 cuttings
- Scissors, Tumbler of water
Step 1: Take the cuttings and cut them right below the nodes of the leaves where you would get about 10 to 12 cm of the cutting. Their is no right size for this, but keep in mind that you would have to bury it half, and half of it would stay above the surface of the soil. Do this for all cuttings with scissors or by hand as preferrable. Pluck out the leaves at the bottom and keep the top one or two pairs intact so that the new roots can sprout in the soil.
Step 2: Take the pot and plant all the cuttings about 4 to 5 cm apart. Water them well by sprinkling water, don’t pour it with force as this may damage or move the cuttings from the soil.
Step 3: Keep the pot in partial shade until the new shoots start coming out and then keep it under direct sunlight, if in summers the leaves start drying out, you can keep it in partial shade for the summer months and move it back in sunlight for rest of the year.
The new shoots should start coming in about 15 days time and don’t fret if some of them die out as this tends to happen. The other way of growing the mint plants is through seeds.
Growing Mint plants with seeds
Things required: Pot size as mentioned and layered, Mint seeds from a seed store, water.
Step 1: Plant the seeds in the pot with about 2 to 3 cm spacing and about 1 or 2 cm deep and try and cover the whole plot through this process. Sprinkle a thin layer of soil over the seeds.
Step 2: Sprinkle water very gently.
Step 3 is the same as above.
New shoots from seeds take some more time, say about 25 days to sprout but pudina grows very fast and spreads out, it needs no transplanting as well and if you’re growing it in a plot you would want to control the growth by putting in barriers around it like a brick or two for it to grow within the designated area.
I have mentioned a few links below on where to buy different materials online as well as local stores in Ahmedabad.
To buy seeds online: The seed store
To buy gardening tools online: Amazon India, Truphe gardening tool set
To buy seeds and watering can and gardening tools in Ahmedabad: Shree Kodiyar garden tools, 30, 31, Silicon Valley, Nr. Shivranjani Cross Roads, Satellite, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380015, India
To buy terracotta pots in Ahmedabad,good local vendors on Rajpath club road, Karnvati club road. A lot of vendors sell concrete pots, but I would insist on terracotta pots as they are environmentally friendly as well as help a dying trade.
For research:
Refer to the youtube channel of Arya Pudota called My organic farm for basics of planting.
Article in The better India: 5 Secrets To Creating The Most Amazing Terrace Garden — From The Father Of Terrace Gardening Himself!
Signing off! :D
P.S if you have any questions or comments, do mention in the comments section, I would love to stir up a good conversation.
