Does Mint Spread By Seed
Welcome to this article about whether mint spreads by seed or not. We can quickly say that it does. It’s the most common way for mint to spread and overtake over plots of land. It produces quite a lot of seed during the season and these travel very easily to other places.
Either from insects, wind or other forces. As you might know, mint grows and establishes itself very easily and can quickly push out other plants. In this article we will discuss some of the ways to prevent this.
If you want to learn even more about growing mint and especially about how you might go about collecting mint seeds then we have put together a guide covering precisely that, find it here, How Do You Collect Mint Seeds.
Does Mint Spread By Seed
We sort of already revealed the answer in the beginning of this article here. Mint spreads the most easily by seed. Once they have dried up they become a lot lighter and easier to move. They can travel both by small insects or by birds or other forces too like wind. Once they have just reached the surface of the soil they will start growing and establishing themselves in this new land.
You might have heard horror stories already about people having their gardens overrun by mint plants. But there are some good techniques to use to make sure that doesn’t happen.
One of the best ways of keeping mint from spreading is by simply picking the flowers of the plant once you see them. Without them there won’t be any seeds developing. But you might be growing a lot of mint at home or have other projects to take care of. Then one of the best ways is to keep it in a pot and grow. This will drastically limit the amount of space it has to grow on as opposed to growing on freeland.
Doing the last step will also let you keep your mint plant indoors during the colder months of the year and provide with even more harvests. You don’t have to worry about it spreading indoors, maybe only if you have something right next to the pot of mint. But otherwise you should be very safe.
How Do Mint Leaves Spread?
It’s important to say that it’s not really the mint leaves that will spread. Instead it’s the seeds and the roots. The leaves only really serve the purpose of catching the sun’s rays and generate energy for the plant. So don’t worry if mint leaves are falling in other places of your garden. They can not spread this way.
Why is it so bad that mint can spread relatively easily? Well, the biggest reason is that it can out compete other neighboring herbs. It will steal the water supply and the nutrition from the soil once it has established itself. It is also a very hardy plant that can be difficult to get rid of. You could actually cut down the whole plant and maybe leave an inch above the soil. In about 3 months it will have grown back to about 1 feet tall at last. Goes to show the possibilities of this herb.
I want to reiterate a bit again on the topic we have talked about. Whether mint will spread by seed or not. It will basically only spread by seed. But one of the easiest ways of preventing it from doing this is by simply picking the flowers as soon as you see them. These will produce the seeds that travel so easily around your garden.
If you want to learn more about growing mint and precisely about letting it flower, we have an article that goes in depth on this topic. You can find it here, Is It Ok To Let Mint Flower.
