Most potted mint looks the same, with a few upright stems, some reasonably sized leaves, but often a bit leggy. It’s alive and well, but it isn’t the lush, abundant mint plant that wafts fragrance to all those lucky enough to be near it.
The difference between a lush beauty and a leggy survivor isn’t necessarily luck or even variety but rather the technique with which it’s grown. I have personally grown mint for years, and the difference between good mint and leggy, poor growth is attributable to four things done consistently.
They are not actually complicated for beginner gardeners, and most people skip two of them entirely.
Here’s (from my own research and experience) what actually produces genuinely bushy mint.
Understand What Your Mint Is Trying To Do
Before I give you the practical advice, here is a quick botanical note that should change how you approach growing mint.
Mint plants spread quickly through their underground runners, which are called stolons and rhizomes, but let’s just call them runners for ease. If mint is left to its own devices in a container, it prioritises sending out those runners under the soil’s surface rather than producing lush minty top growth.
It’s trying to colonise new areas of your garden rather than grow the mint you actually want.
So every piece of advice in this article is about getting the energy of the mint to grow up in a dense, bushy way with large leaves rather than having the growth be invested in growing underground.
1. Pinch Early, Pinch Often, Pinch Everywhere
This is the most pivotal and effective advice that I have to offer you.
Mint, like its herbal friend basil, often races upward (hence the leggy stems) and wants to flower. You need to pinch it before it does, as every time it flowers, the flavour of the leaves deteriorates and the mint’s energy shifts from leaf production entirely.
How do we stop this? By pinching out…All we are doing is removing the growing tip just above a pair of leaves. It really is as simple as that. What this does is force the mint to branch out rather than grow up, and you end up with a much bushier plant.
So where there was one stem, two emerge…you pinch those, you get four! It’s like compound interest. The more you pinch, the more mint you get.
How to do it… Once a stem has produced 3 or 4 sets of leaves, I pinch or snip just above the second set. I would do this across every stem on the mint and repeat it every 10 days or 2 weeks during the growing season, whether you use the mint or not (you can freeze it or dry it as I do).
I would urge you to remove any flower buds as soon as you see them, too.
I know this can feel counterintuitive to pinch a plant back like this, but in a few weeks, you’ll be vindicated when there’s a generously bushy amount of mint.
2. Harvest Aggressively — It’s the Same Thing as Pruning
Most well-meaning mint growers harvest as and when they need their mint, which means you end up with much less mint overall, and even pick away at their mint, harvesting one leaf at a time.
The smart, savvy gardener aggressively harvests! Each time you prune a stem back to just above a leaf, you are stimulating the same branching response as deliberate pinching. The key difference here is that only taking individual leaves without snipping the stem too doesn’t produce the branching response, so you don’t get the same compounding effect.
The rule to remember…Always snip the stem, and you can take up to a 1/3 of the mint’s height in a single harvest if you need it (for mint sauce!). The mint recovers very quickly and comes back stronger!
3. Get the Pot Size Right — And This Might Surprise You
So, for some gardeners I speak to, the instinct with herbs is to give them as much space to grow as possible, so they give them a really big pot.
This does definitely work, but it only works to a point, as a really large pot of nice, fertile soil encourages root and runner growth (stolons) to establish themselves before it considers growth lots of nice mint leaves.
The roots can race to fill the underground space (as they think they are competing with other plants) while the mint grows slowly.
I have personally seen mint, grown in very large containers, stay less productive for a year or so, for this reason.
So what works better? It’s a tricky balance, but I find that a 20 cm (8 inches) pot for a single mint plant keeps the root system contained enough that it prioritises growth of its leaves and stems, yet still has a decent amount of soil to draw water and nutrients from.
An important caveat to this is too small a pot and the mint can very easily become rootbound. To avoid this, I check the roots each spring, and I divide or repot the plant before it becomes rootbound.
4. Light Is Imperative For Bushy Mint
This is perhaps as important as regular pinching to achieve the bush mint we all dream of. Lower light produces tall, etiolated stems that grow upwards quickly with pale leaves looking for stronger light, and pinching isn’t going to help in this case.
Mint loves the sun, and I have found that if you want a compact, dense and romantically aromatic growth, you need a good level of light intensity. The very best mint that I grow is outdoors in a spot that gets morning sun and then dappled light (under the shade of tomatoes) in the afternoon.
This is the set-up that grows mint with the highest concentration of essential oils and therefore flavour and aroma, and is better than the mint I grow indoors.
Indoors: South-facing windows are best…If your mint is looking leggy, it needs more sun.
Outdoors: From late spring to summer, morning sun followed by afternoon dappled light or shade is the gold standard. There is something about the light intensity of morning sun that works wonders on mint. I would avoid afternoon sun as the pot dries out too quickly, and there’s potential to scorch your mint.
If you improve nothing else, then improve the light, as it underpins every other one of my interventions on the list.
Mint as Compound Interest
The reason some mints are lush, and some are ordinary, is that each factor compounds the other. Good morning, light produces good growth, which responds well to pinching, and the frequent harvesting reinforces the pinching effect. Then, selecting the optimal-sized pot keeps the mint growing leaves rather than roots.
If you do all four consistently, starting in Spring, by mid-summer, you’ll have an extravagant abundance of mint. I like this because it means I can have lots of mint tea whenever I want.
Growing mint and seeing the bushy results? I’d love to see it, drop a comment below.