My first Harvest

Mint....thats what this wonderfully smelling plant is. Peppermint to be more precise. I bought it as a plant already. Glad I did too. The first picture is what it looked like when I first brought it home and planted it in the pot. Not too big. Well that soon changed. My house is full of windows and becasue of that the mint took off. After once again searching the wwww for information I finally found out how to harvest the mint.


All that needs to be done is actually quite simple. Just cut off the stems no more than 3" from the base tie together with kitchen twine and hang in a bag to dry. The leaves can also be used fresh as well. You can make a nice cup of tea with them. I chose to dry them. I don't have kitchen twine so I used a twist tie. Then labled a brown lunch bag and placed them in it twist tie up. So that they are hanging upside down. Then I just hung the bag from the clothes line in my laundry room. From what I was able to find they need to dry for about a week in a warm dry area. The laundry room seemed to be the best spot for that.

Something else I learned is that it is best to harvest mint first thing in the morning as that is when the oils are at their strongest. And let me tell you the smell of the cuttings was soooooo good. Peppermint smells wonderful. I will be searching for things to use my harvested mint over the next week....will have to post what I find and how it turns out.