Peppermint Seeds

Days to Maturity: 73 from direct sow

No herb or kitchen garden is complete without mint, and peppermint adds a festive note to the display, evoking the holidays and filling the air with its fresh, clean scent when rubbed. Give it a go from seed this season and delight your friends with little peppermint seedlings for the holidays!

Strongly aromatic peppermint can be used in both cooking - in drinks, salads, and baked goods - and in potpourri and other fragrant decorative items. In hot tea, it is said to help stomach upset.

Peppermint is a perennial, reaching 3 feet tall in the garden (much smaller in pots and indoors), and spreading just as far as you will let it. It offers smooth, lance-shaped 3-inch leaves, bright green with purple tints around the edges. In summer, spikes of lilac-pink flowers top the foliage, attracting bees into the garden. Give it sunshine and good soil drainage; it will do the rest.

Like all the mints, peppermint can be invasive. If you want to cover hot, sunny soil, it's invaluable, but if your space is limited or you want to plant other things nearby, you are much better off confining peppermint to a container. It grows wonderfully, and you will not only have plenty to harvest, but enough to give friends cuttings so that they can start their own mint gardens.

Mint is not the easiest seed to sprout, but if you have a Park's Original Bio Dome Seed-Starting System it's a walk in the park: drop one seed in each bio sponge, put the dome on, and wait to see green shoots in 7 to 14 days. If you're using seed flats or another method of germination, here's the best approach: set one or two seeds in shallow 1/4-inch holes in moist seed-starting mix. Cover the flat with plastic wrap and germinate at 65 degrees Fahrenheit or above.

If you are starting the seeds in late winter for transplanting in spring, begin about 6 weeks before last scheduled frost. Peppermint will be ready to pick on an as-needed basis about 3 weeks after transplanting; it grows so quickly that you never have to worry about taking too much, as long as you leave a few green leafy stems on the plant! Harvest all summer and fall.

Perfect for beginning gardeners, mint is the easiest of all herbs to grow, a perennial hardy in zones 4-9. In addition to flavoring food and drinks, it serves as a natural pest deterrent in the vegetable, herb, or flower garden, and chewing the leaves not only freshens the breath but is said to calm an upset stomach.

Choosing a Mint Variety

Native to the Mediterranean, the genus Mentha has parented more than 3,500 varieties. By far the most commonly grown in this country are Spearmint (M. spicata) and Peppermint (M. x piperita). Both are super easy to grow, taking off like crazy to perfume home or garden all season!

When to Start Mint Seeds

For spring planting, mint seeds can be started indoors in late winter or direct-sown in the warm spring soil. But as a hardy perennial, they can be started anytime until about 2 months before the first frost of fall, or year-round for indoor use.

How to Start Mint Seeds

To sow the seeds indoors, place them on top of the Bio Sponge in your Bio Dome, or on top of the medium in your seed flat. Do not cover the seeds; they need light to germinate. They should sprout within 10 to 15 days at room temperature or slightly warmer (68 to 75°F). Transplant into the garden or container when they have at least 2 sets of true leaves.

To sow the seeds outdoors, place them on top of well-worked soil, then sprinkle a fine layer of vermiculite on top of them. If you are sowing directly into the garden, consider placing a row cover over the seeds until they sprout.

Special Considerations

• Harvest sprigs from the plant as you need them all season long.
  
• Try to pick mint in the morning, when the flavorful oils are strongest.
  
• Plant your mint where passersby will brush the foliage, which releases its heady aroma.
  
• For new plants from your old ones, root a stem cutting in a glass of water, or divide the entire plant into sections and replant each division.

Growing Tips for Mint Plants

• Mint thrives best in partial shade and rich, moist soil. However, it is famously unfussy, so chances are it will not only survive but flourish in any light from full sun to deep shade, and any quality of soil provided the drainage is decent. Many gardeners deliberately plant it in less favorable conditions to slow down its spread!
  
• Space plants 12 to 18 inches apart in the garden.
  
• Throughout the growth months, pinch off the tips of the stems. This makes your plant bushier and less leggy.
  
• Avoid using fertilizer on mint.

Pests and Problems to Watch For

Mint's greatest advantage -- its utter ease of growth -- is also one of its biggest problems. Do not plant it in an area where other plants must compete for space. If you want it in the garden but without the rapid spread, set it into a container instead, and use a saucer at the base to prevent the roots from growing into the soil below.

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Peppermint Germination Information

• Best sown indoors at alternating temperatures of 55 and 72°
• Sow with NO cover as light aids in germination
• Seeds can also be sown outdoors when the soil is warming in the spring
• Sow with barely any cover
• Indoors and out, expect germination in 15-30 days
• When sowing seed outdoors, we recommend a maximum planting depth of 4X the width of the seed

This plant grows 3 feet tall and spreads indefinitely. The small, tubular, purple, lilac or pink flowers are not showy, but they attract bees. It is grown for its dark green purple tinge, aromatic, edible leaves. Harvest them at any time for fresh use; to dry them, harvest just before the flowers open. The leaves, combined with Spearmint, are brewed into a tea

Superior Germination Through Superior Science

First of all, we have humidity- and temperature-controlled storage, and we never treat any of our seeds with chemicals or pesticides. Nor do we ever sell GMO's (genetically modified seeds), so you always know the products you're buying from us are natural as well as safe for you and the environment.

Superior Standards - University Inspected

Hand Packed By Experienced Technicians

When packing our seeds, the majority are actually done by hand (with extreme care!), and we often over-pack them, so you're receiving more than the stated quantity.

The Park Seed Gold Standard

Heirloom Seeds are open-pollinated -- they are not hybrids. You can gather and save heirloom seed from year to year and they will grow true to type every year, so they can be passed down through generations. To be considered an heirloom, a variety would have to be at least from the 1940's and 3 generations old (many varieties are much older -- some 100 years or more!).

Hybrid seed are the product of cross-pollination between 2 different parent plants, resulting in a new plant/seed that is different from the parents. Unlike Heirloom seed, hybrid seed need to be re-purchased new every year (and not saved). They usually will not grow true to type if you save them, but will revert to one of the parents they were crossed with and most likely look/taste different in some way.