Is It Ok To Let Mint Flower

Welcome to this post about letting mint flower. It is ok letting it do it and what are some of the benefits and the downsides of this. As you might know mint is one of the herbs that spreads the easiest. It is also a perennial so you won’t really notice the new seedlings popping up until the next season.

But the only way for the mint to spread to new parts of your grade is by letting it flower. Without flowers it won’t develop seeds. Follow along and we will talk more in depth about this.

If you want to learn even more about growing mint and even about growing new ones from your own seed, then we have written an article dedicated to that. Find it here, How Do You Collect Mint Seeds?

Is It Ok To Let Mint Flower

Letting mint flowers can have both upside and downsides like we said in the beginning of this article here. The upside of having mint is that you are able to collect the seed and plant more mint at home. They also smell very nice and can contribute to making wonderful tea from them as they are very aromatic. In my household we like to use them both for tea but also to sprinkle and top a fresh salad with. They are just an all around nice ingredient to have at home.

The biggest downside with them is probably that once you start seeing them, new leaves won’t be so common. This is because the plant is now focusing more on growing out the flowers so it can develop seeds and eventually spread to other places. So if you want to have more mint growing on your plant and new growth to appear then you need to pick off the flowers as soon as you see them. You will definitely notice the slowing down of growth otherside.

But another big downside is that if they are growing outside they can go undetected and you might find mint seedlings popping up in other places of your garden the next year. Mint seeds travel very easily and establish themselves very easily too. Once they have started growing on a new spot of land they quickly take it over and dominate the other plants. It can take all the nutrients and space for itself, eventually pushing the other plants out.

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One of the best ways of preventing it from spreading like this is by just picking off the flowers and there will be no seeds growing. But you maybe want to have it bloom and use them but don’t want it spreading elsewhere. Then we highly recommend keeping it in a pot indoors instead. This will also limit the space it takes up and the likelihood of you seeing mint seedlings elsewhere the next year is very low.

Should I Cut Flowers Off Mint?

I want to reiterate a bit again on what we have been talking about. Mint is perfectly ok to let flower. It makes for a very unique and special ingredient to use. But it also has its downsides, in that seeds will develop and spread very easily. The overall taste of the plant will also be lesser once the flowers start to appear. This is because the energy goes towards them instead of growing out new leaves.

If you want to go even more in depth in how mint spread by seed then we have written an entire article dedicated to that. You can find it here, Does Mint Spread By Seed.