Making a Mint With Herbs Is Not All That Difficult

By James A. Duke.

Herbs are easy to grow, and increasingly easier to sell. Cautious growers can supplement their incomes selling herbs, or grow a variety of herbs for home use including cooking and herb teas, or decoration.

With a 6- to 7-month growing season, you can grow several perennial herbs that sell well at summer garden stands.

My son made vacation spending money by selling herbs at an urban farmer's market. Thyme and chives were his biggest sellers. He started both from seed in pots and marketpacks in our small greenhouse. The chives in 4 x 6 inch peat market-packs sold for over a dollar, planted (at least 5 marketpacks) from a 35 seed package.

Other herbs, including thyme, can be subdivided readily by cutting or root divisions. Chives, thyme, and other herbs are ready sellers, weekend after weekend.

There is a big demand both for hanging pots and for herbs. Put the two together and you should have a money earner. Balm, Corsican mint, oregano, peppermint, rosemary, savory, spearmint, and thyme have good hanging possibilities.

Perennials more than annuals tend to drape themselves over the edges of pots, making them especially attractive for macrame plant hangers. Annuals like basil are less attractive to the macrame buyer, but still attractive to the adventurous cook. All can sell.

Some buyers are more drawn to the decorative piece of art (pot plus plant) than to pot or plant alone. Some people will buy a hanging rosemary to look at, not to use. My wife, a botanist, spent more money last year on herbs she looks at than herbs she uses.

Hanging Pots

Hanging pots need to be watered and drained. Pots with holes in the bottom will drain into saucers also held in the hanger. A good mixture of potting soil and vermiculite, premixed or mixed by the experienced at home, is adequate.

Hanging pots can be started with seeds, but you gain time by starting with rooted cuttings or plant subdivisions. Seed and plant dealers advertise in many horticultural journals.

Like ground plants, hanging pots require water, light, and protection from frost. Many herbs in hanging baskets can be grown in winter in a small greenhouse.

Eventually fertilization will help, since constant clipping of herbs will eventually deplete the soil of nutrients. Bonemeal, well-rotted compost, weed-free manure, or a light sprinkling of 5-10-5 commercial fertilizer can be spread near but not at the base of the plant, perhaps to a radius equaling the plant's height.

Since most of my personal experiences have centered on mints and ginseng, I will emphasize them. Mints offer their magic touch to herbal tea, while ginseng attracts much attention these days.

We drink a lot of herb tea at my house, and I prefer a blend of several herbs to a single herb. Thyme, oregano, and savory are too overbearing to be used alone, but they can enhance other interesting dominants like lemon balm, peppermint, and spearmint.

Easy-Grow Mints

Easy mints to grow for home consumption include apple mint, bergamot, lemon balm, lemon thyme, orangemint, peppermint, rosemary, sage, and spearmint. These are perennials, that come back from the roots in spring.

If you plant mints, keep in mind that many are difficult to eliminate once established. Plan before you plant perennials. Whether you plant seed or plants, determine where you want your plants to reside permanently.

To prevent herbs from spreading, set them out in sunken tins or pots, old tires, in the holes in cinder blocks, or be prepared to do battle with some of the more aggressive spreaders.

Some mints are handsome enough in their own right to be commingled with the ornamental garden. Anise-hyssop, bergamot, hyssop, and several sages (such as pineapple sage) have colorful flowers. Coleus is added to herb borders for its ornamental foliage.

Colorful foliage "varieties" have been developed in many mints. Leaves that are silver-, yellow-, and white-margined or variegated occur in the balm, sage, and thyme species. The purple foliage in various basils, bugles and sages adds to ornamental borders. At the outer edge of the ornamental bed, creeping varieties of mint or thyme can add aroma as well as color to your walkway.

You may place favorite herbs strategically in the ornamental bed, or in a formal "knot" garden.

Land Needs

The Primer for Herb Growing (issued by the Herb Society of America) indicates that an 8 x 10 foot plot of land will supply enough herbs for a family of four. The hobbyist can get by with an 8 x 12 foot greenhouse. A perennial grower can get by with a half-acre lot and no greenhouse.

There are true and false tales of ginseng growers making more than $10,000 per half-acre (21,780 square feet). The true tales relate to cautious and serious growers.

It is quite possible to lose money on ginseng. Good 3-year ginseng planting stock can cost more than a dollar per root. With good luck, and a simulated northern habitat, some will produce seed the first year.

To a smart marketer the 20 seeds per plant may repay cost of the root in the first year. But even the cautious grower may lose all the roots to adverse conditions. Chipmunks, groundhogs and other animals may be nuisances in the ginseng garden, devouring the roots and/or tops.

The cautious ginseng or mint grower can make some money on a small-scale farm. The best ginseng grower can survive on a few well-managed acres. The run-of-the-mill mint farmer will make less, unless the facts and/or fiction spread about ginseng could be equally spread about mints. What would happen, for example, if the world believed that bergamot, not ginseng, improved vitality and intellectual acuity and made old men young again?

Once land is prepared, the small herb grower has no special equipment need, but may want drying equipment. The small herb farmer will probably harvest by hand.

We string up our herbs in a dry area out of the sunshine. Herbs dried in the sun tend to lose much of their flavor and color.

Bigger growers of mints or ginseng may need drying racks that can provide ventilation and heat to prevent mildew during humid periods.

If the importance of a plant can be judged by the number of inquiries I get about it, ginseng is the most important herb, followed closely by the medicinal herb, goldenseal. As an herb grower, I would start with these if money were my main objective. I now have a small patch of ginseng intercropped with goldenseal, hoping that the bitterness of the goldenseal will discourage rodents from frequenting my ginseng patch.