When to plant mint?
- Botanical name
- Mentha spicata
- Family
- Lamiaceae
Mint is planted from March to April. It is harvested from April to October. It is cut back from August to September.
Mint is a perennial plant. The edible parts are the leaves and flowers.
Mint through the year
- planting
- harvest
- cutting back
In short
Growing conditions
Companions in the bed
Companion planting is tradition and not an agronomic claim. What is recorded is which pairs sources recommend and which they advise against.
Mint runs through a bed and after two years you will not get it out, so plant it in a pot sunk into the bed.
Mint runs through a bed and after two years you will not get it out, so plant it in a pot sunk into the bed.
- “Cited” means the pair is named by one source or two.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
Aphids
pest- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
Sage and ligurian leafhopper
pest- Signs
- Over the upper side of the leaves there is a coarse pale speckling, and on the underside small animals that jump away quickly. By the end of summer the leaf can be heavily mottled, while the growth of the plant is hardly affected. The affected herbs are perfectly safe to eat.
- Prevention
- It overwinters as an egg on the plant itself and is active from May into autumn, so cleared old wood and foliage at the end of the season helps. Encourage birds, ladybirds, parasitic wasps and ground beetles.
- What to do
- No spray is needed: the pest does not affect the growth or the vigour of the plant, so the right answer is to put up with it. If the look bothers you, cut back the most mottled shoots, because the new growth comes clean.
Mint rust
disease- Signs
- In spring the shoots are pale and distorted. On the stems and leaves there are dusty orange pustules, followed by yellow and then black ones. Large areas of leaf tissue die and the plant sheds its leaves.
- Prevention
- The fungus overwinters in the rhizome and in resting spores in the soil, so healthy planting material is everything. Move new shoots to another spot, away from infected rhizomes, and do not propagate from an affected plant. An airy spacing and cleared fallen leaves lower the pressure.
- What to do
- For edible herbs there are no fungicides against this. Remove affected plants before the spores develop and destroy infected rhizomes. The rhizomes of healthy plants can be disinfected in a hot water bath (44 °C, ten minutes).
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Lamiaceae).
Sources about the plant: ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants, BUND Region Hannover, Colorado State University Extension, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, University of Georgia Extension, University of Illinois Extension, University of New Hampshire Extension, Utah State University Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: Clemson Cooperative Extension, EPPO Global Database, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.