Apple Mint, Woolly Mint

I love this mint. I line the back of the house with it so I don't have to weedwack or maintain a bed. I just mow right up to it and ove...Read Morer the runners. Smells wonderful and much, much better than the johnson grass that used to reside there. It's a great addition to recipes and I make tea with it regularly. Agree, it is a taller variety, but I am very pleased with it. Absolutely a hardy spreader (invasive), but with how we use it and where, it's fine. Maybe 10 years from now I will change my mind.....

Apple Mint has been a part of my life since I was a child. My Mom has grown it for 50 years, only we didn't know it was Apple Mint until ...Read Morea year ago. My Great Grandmother, Sadie Mae Kaufman grew it in a bed in York County, PA, but she called it "Stomach Balsam", because when steeped, it was the first thing you were allowed to drink after having a sick stomach. The farmers called it "Horse Mint", because it grew in the fields. My Mom dug some from my Great Grandmother's bed and has moved it from state to state over the last 50 years!
If you steep 4 or 5 sprigs with tea bags, it makes the best tasting tea. You can also steep it without tea bags, and sweeten it and it makes a refreshing drink.

I grow mine in a huge plastic tub with drainage holes drilled in the bottom. It will get tall and leggy if you let it go. Keep it trimmed back. Don't let it flower, as doing so makes the leaves bitter. When you use it to steep in tea, use the smaller leaves, as they are better tasting. It will root in water, but it's got a mind of it's own! Sometimes it roots, and sometimes it doesn't! I've had success in water, and also using rooting hormone and seed starter mix.

I love this mint..... if you need a little calming down, pluck a leaf and tear it in half and just inhale the scent... it's very calming. For me, it also brings back wonderful childhood memories, as every summer my Mom would make iced tea with it.

Love the smell of Apple Mint when I mow over it. I am currently growing 4 kinds of mint, apple, chocolate peppermint, spearmint, Eau de C...Read Moreologne mint. The apple mint is taller than the rest and is as invasive as spearmint.

I find this mint to be the most attractive one of all. Tall, with large sturdy fragrant leaves (pretty flowers later on) and a flavor of ...Read Morenot of apple, but more like a wintergreen smell and taste.

It is very nice for hot/cold tea; it gives _All_ of it's flavor best in the heat of water when you steep it for 5 minutes; (put it in a mug or a heat appropiate measuring cup) and pour boiled water over it.
Where it becomes smoothe textured and then the leaf has no flavor left after steeping because _All_ of the flavor is quickly infused with the water. Brew some, try it; chew it and see what I mean.

This does not happen with other mints that I've tried; there is aways not enough flavor with other mints, and still most of the flavor stays in the leaves with other mints.

I use 4 leaves (large) from the bottom, 1/8th piece of lemon, and my favorite tea bag in a 12 ounce mug; pour boiled water over all and steep for 5-6 minutes. Very yummy!

This is one of my favorite smells from childhood.

I bought the mint that I made the cuttings from, at a farmers' market in Ithaca, New York, (because I live in Deposit, NYS; about 40 miles away) "totally organic." I decided to cut them up after I plucked most of the leaves off, left the stems in a mason jar on the back porch in normal tap water and saw that the stems wanted to produce more leaves just by standing in the water. I changed the water every-other-day, normal sink water, nothing else added. After 3 weeks the stems were making roots at the bottom. That's when I thought of making the cuttings. Seems the more I tried to 'kill' it, the more it wanted to live on. They are doing great and have developed their own roots (I tugged on them to make sure, just yesterday.) I can whole heartedly agree that the mint could become "Invasive" in a warmer climate, if they can take root after what I have done to them! I have converted some 5 gallon pickle buckets I found into plant containers for them by drilling holes into the bottoms.

Having a (Big 'Cheesy Grin')

I have more cuttings than what you see in the photo, I just thought that 5 pots with 5 cuttings in each would be enough for the picture.