THE MINT PROJECT

 "CLONES"

Who doesn't love mint right?

 

Starting this week, (Jan 5th-ish) I'm going to embark on a fun  Mint project/experiment.  This is kind of special because, many varieties of mint are extremely difficult to cultivate from seed.  So, what I will be doing is hunting down and gathering several different varieties of mint plants which are growing in a soil container, and I will be cloning them in to a hydroponics environment. 

Now the  soil pots will be kept well away from the hydroponic garden, as we absolutely don't want any potential contamination from those thing which "live/fly/grow" in soil. 

Here is a list of mint varieties: (There are probably other, but this is my list for now)

Apple Mint, Chocolate Mint, Curly Mint, Ginger Mint, Mint, Orange Peppermint,

Pineapple Mint, Spearmint, Catnip, Pennyroyal,  ‘Walker’s Low’ Catmint

My Goal is to try to find at least 4 to 5 varieties, clone them and see how well they play in the Hydroponic Garden!

Just a side note about mint: Generally in soil gardens mint does pretty well, and in fact it will many times take over garden spaces, once it get's rolling.  It's some what aggressive in soil.  However, in a hydroponic setting it's easily controlled by virtue of it's container.

In my last year of attempting to grow in the soil, I had acquired several mint plants, and I was able to successfully keep them going.  I eventually ended up chopping them all up, drying them and using them for varies culinary uses.  But they did grow pretty easily!
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UPDATE 1/5/2014..
OK..we're cooking now.. I found 3 different mint plants at Trader Joes today!
Apple, Pineapple and Spearmint.  I took 3 clippings from each one and into the rockwool they went.  I did not use any cloning/root hormone.  I'm using the Masterblend - Lettuce Formula.

Many varieties of mints look pretty much like each other, but if you gently rub the leaves, you can smell the difference pretty quickly. The Pineapple mint does have a smaller leaf than the Apple Mint or Spear Mint.