This post is a record of my current attempt to grow a new orange mint plant from cuttings of our original one. I am not sure whether I let the mint plant grow too large and leggy prior to harvesting but lately, the flavor and scent of the orange mint leaves has been quite lacking. Instead of the large flavorful leaves it once had, the original mint plant has been growing lots of tiny sprouts of leaves without much aroma. Despite a heavy trim, it is still growing back rapidly with the tiny flavorless leaves. Hence, the new project of growing mint from cuttings!

Original minty Medusa plant

I took several cuttings (about 6 or 7) from the original plant by cutting right below the nodes of leaves. I then gently picked off all the lower leaves and left only the top one or two pairs of leaves at the top of each stem. I placed them in glasses of water on the bright sunny window ledge, making sure that the nodes were all submerged in water but not the top foliage.
New root growth was noticeable at about day 3. I had also ordered the Root Boost brand rooting hormone powder from Amazon but as it turns out, this was completely unnecessary. After 6 days, the stems had already sprouted pretty substantial roots! At this point, I decided to move these cuttings into a ceramic pot with regular potting soil.

This post is archived under Hobbies, Plants