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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Does Pruning Make Bushy Mint Plants?

When reading plant care tips, whether herbs of flowering plants, one of the most common tips you'd see is pruning.  You're supposed to pinch, deadhead or prune (all of which are foliage and flower removal) to encourage branching and to make the plant bushier.  I've witnessed that many times in my very short herb caring career.  Today I'll demonstrate it with my Swiss Mint. Barely two weeks old in my garden and it already fell prey to my prunamania (addiction to pruning).  Look at the red circle.  That's where I cut the original stem about a week ago.  Today, a week later, you'd see that leaves are growing on the sides of the cut. In a week or two, it will become apparent that my Swiss Mint is branching out.  Theoretically, you perform that regularly enough, you'll have a bushy plant (lots of branches).  That makes pruning really cool in two respects:  your original plant looks a lot healthier and you get to propagate a lot (naturally you should root and plant the cuttings).

Next time around, I'll show you what regular pruning did to my relatively young Cinnamon Basil over the course of a month and a half. 




2 comments:

  1. There is no better way to understand plants and their behavior than to experiment with them. I admire your curiosity. Good job!

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  2. Thanks for dropping by Helen! Experimentation rocks. ;-)

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