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One of the things I took away from my recent horticulture class, was several cuttings from a bed of mint they have growing in the horticulture yard at Las Positas College. This particular plant had spread into upright stems about 18-24 inches tall into a beautiful mat in a part sun area of the hort yard. We had done a lab to root stems from cuttings, so I ordered some rooting powder and brought my cuttings home. I dipped them in rooting powder, and planted them in these seed trays (great value for money, IMO. I’m starting all sorts of stuff in these trays!). I left a about four inches of stem and leaves above the soil level.

What ended up happening was that all but the very new little leaves at the top of the stem wilted or got black spots and eventually fell away. The stems got attacked by aphids (indoors!), so I took the seeding tray outside about a week ago and forgot about it. Today I noticed it still alive and saw that my cuttings now had about three inches of bare stem where the larger leaves had fallen off. This made me think of the tomato planting trenching method I read about in the All New Square Foot Gardening.

I’ll be using it later in the season when we get our tomatoes in the ground. It takes advantage of some plants ability to grow roots from places where you’ve cut off leaf stems. Getting back to my unknown mint, I now had three inches of stem sticking out of the soil and being attacked by aphids that each had four or so places where leaves had grown.

So today, I made a deep cuttings planter from a milk carton, and pulled my mint stems out of my leaf tray. Only one of the five stems had grown any roots at all, so I don’t feel like I’m losing much if this doesn’t work out.

Here’s what we’re left with today, with the weakest stem alongside by comparison:

They don’t look great, but they also cost no money! If they root and grow, I’ve got a nice part-shade area for them under the fruit trees.