Mint is a plant with leaves that has got a fresh, aromatic taste and scent, combined with a more cool aftertaste. It is used for many things like candy, toothpaste, tea and adding flavour to your food.

Mint is fairly easy to grow, but there is one slight problem: it spreads like a plague. To avoid that, the first thing you need is a piece of soil where the mint can roam freely without swallowing up space for your other plants. Mint can grow in a lot of environments, but the best place is in a slightly moist piece of soil, partially in the shade.

To grow mint at home, find an appropriate space where it can grow and dig a hole large enough for your mint plant and its roots. If you have multiple plants (which I advise having), make sure the holes are approx. 20 cm away from eachother. That way you'll make sure they each have enough space to grow.

Next, you'll need the mint plants. If you don't have these already, you can get them from a nursery or your local gardening centre. You could also use seeds, which would have to be soaked first, but because the success rate with seeds vary a lot and their growth might be hard to control, I recommend using plants instead (that have already gone through the first phase of growing).

Now that you have everything ready, it's time to plant the mint. If you want to make them less 'agressive' growing, place them inside some bottomless containers. You can use a lot of things for that, but a stone/clay pipe probably works best. This doesn't prevent them from overgrowing though, it just slows the process down. Eventually, the mints' roots will 'crawl' over the top of the containers. If you see this happening, cut them off.

Mint will grow in almost any season as long as it doesn't freeze, so you might be able to even plant them right now. After you've planted them, you don't have to do very much. Give the plants some water every once or second day and make sure they don't spread elsewhere in your garden.

It takes approximately 3 months for mint to grow from seed to plant (if you're using seeds). If you bought them as plants, you could harvest from them any moment you like. To harvest them, pluck off the leaves or cut off the whole plant, it all depends on what you prefer.

In case you want to enjoy mint in colder seasons like late autumn and winter, see my article about drying herbs here. This way works the best if you've cut off the whole plant. If you just plucked the leaves, the best idea would be to simply place them on a plate and leave them in the sun for a while, or place the plate in the oven for a couple of minutes.