How often to water mint

The interval

Mint is the thirstiest herb in this journal. Water it about every 3 days in the growing season and about every 10 days in winter. Growing season means the warm, bright months from spring to early autumn, roughly March to September in the northern hemisphere and September to March in the southern. Winter is the cold, short-day part of your own year, when the plant dies back or rests and uses little. The Royal Horticultural Society says to keep the compost evenly moist, and NC State Extension says mint does not do well in dry soils, which fits a plant that grows wild in moist fields and along pond edges.

Check by touch every day in warm weather. Push a finger 2 cm into the compost. It should feel damp, never dusty and never sodden. Lift the pot as well. A pot of mint is heavy when it is moist and strikingly light when it is dry, and a light pot means water now. The RHS says plants in containers dry out more quickly than those in the ground and should be checked often, and more often in hot spells.

The method is keep-moist, which means regular drinks in place of the soak and dry of a succulent. Water gently at the base until the compost is damp throughout and a little runs out of the bottom. In hot weather, the RHS suggests moving the pot into shade to reduce how often it needs water. Humidity is medium for this plant, and ordinary air does.

Too little water is the common failure, and mint shows it quickly: a pot that dries out sheds its lower leaves at once. Too much, with poor drainage, shows as yellowing.

What is particular to this plant is how it spreads. The RHS describes mint as having vigorous spreading rhizomes, which is why it is best in a pot or a bottomless container sunk into the soil. A pot of mint exhausts itself in a year, going woody in the middle and small in the leaf, so divide it every spring.

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