Many Mints: Recipes and Growing Tips for Mint

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Green Mint: Spearmint (Mentha spicata) Jerry Pavia

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Mint Tips:
• Mints for Health
• Growing Mint
• The Mint Family 

Recipes:
• Mint & Lettuce Salad
• Cucumber Mint Salad
• Apple Walnut Salad
• White Grape & Mint Salsa
• Minted Carrots
• Asian Pork Chops with Mint
• Herby Beer Bread
• Strawberries with Mint Cream
• Mojitos 
• Cold-Pressed Mint Tea 

Web Exclusive Recipes:
• Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Dipping Sauce
• Indian Grilled Chicken with Mint 
• Grilled Salmon with Mint Butter 

Some plants have been part of the human experience for so long that we take them completely for granted. Like the pathway in our garden or the sky overhead, mint often is overlooked, despite its role as a basic building block of an herb garden. Ordinary, common and well-used, mint rarely occurs to us as exotic.

However, if we consider its history and scope, we find that mint is anything but ordinary. Mint is found in diverse culinary cultures from Arabia, Iraq, India, Italy and Afghanistan to northern Europe and the Americas. Mint has been found in Egyptian tombs dating to 1000 b.c. and was common in ancient Japan and China. The Assyrians in what is now Iraq used mint in rituals and ancient Hebrews used mint as a strewing herb for fragrance on the floors of synagogues.

The early Greeks and Romans used spearmint as a seasoning in meat and vegetable dishes, and as a refreshing bath herb, often combined with rose petals. During the Middle Ages, dried, powdered mint was used to whiten teeth and freshen breath. As it turns out, humble mint has been one of the most widely used herbs in history.

I recently conducted a nationwide survey of wholesale and retail plant and seed sellers to determine the 10 bestselling herbs in the country. Mint rated fourth in popularity, following basil, lavender and parsley. Nearly every gardener who starts an herb garden begins with mint, along with six or seven other herbs.

The mint family includes about 30 species, and some sources claim 500 to 600 varieties, including spearmint, peppermint, apple, orange, Spanish, Moroccan, pineapple, ginger, lemon, pennyroyal, water, chocolate—and the list goes on. 

V.J. Billings of Mountain Valley Growers separates the mints into three convenient categories, which, though not scientific classifications, make it easy to divide the mints into logical classifications for the home gardener.

(1) Green mints: includes spearmint and its variations.
(2) Red mints (meaning red-stemmed): includes peppermints and their cousins basils, along with Moroccan, lime, orange bergamot, chocolate and lavender mints.
(3) Fuzzy mints: includes Egyptian, apple, pineapple and similar fuzzy-leafed variations.

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