Mint plants in general like moist soil. Soggy undrained soil is not good.
An established mint patch will not be lost by cutting it back severely - with adequate water there will be a dense stand of it again in a few weeks.
Of course, my mint is thriving in the soggy, poorly drained clay I moved it to. It’s the only part of the yard that is soggy because it’s at the corner of the sloped yard. I put it there because nothing else was growing in that part of the yard.
Woo hoo! Thanks for the reassurances. It will be exciting to see the mint spring back anew, and now with an entire flower bed clear-cut, it has even more space to take over!
It just looks so sad right now, and I’m mint-less for the time being.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. It doesn’t seem to be slowing growth, though. The mint is not right up against the wall, it’s actually quite close to the shabbily-installed gas system (which I’m reassured is fixed by now). I will check out some of the veggies, though, which are right up against the wall. We ate onions from right next to the wall all last year … if we weren’t moving, I’d get the soil tested.
We’re moving as soon as garden season is over. Which, if recent behaviour of squash-stealing squirrels and tomato-thieving racoons (and mint-mowing landlords) is any indication, shouldn’t be too long.
Zsofia, for your next trick, would you please come out to Shaw AFB and kill some of the fucking hydrangia growing in two of our ponds? We’ve used hundreds of gallons of herbacide out here, and it’s still growing back. You can hear it laugh as it grows!
Hydrangea? Like with the flowers? Honey, if it looks pretty I bet I can kill it from here in Columbia. Too bad it wasn’t expensive and hard to pot, because I can do that back in time.
Since the thread has become a friendly exchange of gardening advice, I’ll move it away from the barren, rocky soil of the Pit and into the barren, rocky soil of MPSIMS.
Is it just me or does the fresh mint in the store have no flavor at all? Only home grown mint has more flavor than lettuce, I’ve been saddened to learn recently.
How to kill a pot of mint, in less than twelve hours, so that it never ever comes back. What you do is notice a little white fly bothering a couple of the leaves on your lovely mint plant. You don’t have any bug killer and don’t want to use it on a food plant anyway.
So you remember that a soap solution is good for killing some bugs. Unfortunately, the only soap you have outside is the super strong detergent used for stripping oils off of fabric to ready it for dying. You make a really really weak solution and spritz away. Next morning you are shocked to see the most dead plant in the whole world. Absolutely nothing will induce it to grow back.
I’m usually good with plants, but stupid is powerful stuff.
I had mint growing in the back of my yard in Calgary, through the fence. I used to harvest it and use it with great regularity. Until I saw three of the neighbourhood dogs pee on it, one right after another. Stupid dogs.
Well, if Zsofia is busy, I could probably come help you out. I have a world-class talent for killing plants. Some people have a green thumb, I have a gangrene thumb. 
I think I’ve killed mint, too. I had two spearmint plants, and August’s clear blue skies and hot sunny days (and my forgetfulness in watering) have led to dry shriveled excuses for mint.
I shall persist next year, though! It’s not expensive to buy a little plant, and the spearmint grows from cuttings quite nicely. Next year, though, I won’t put the containers in direct sun and leave them arid for days on end.
Eh, the sad thing is, I’d probably rinse it off and use it anyway.
I wanted to harass Zsofia because she (?) was only thirty or so miles up the road. The situation with the Hygrangea has gotten so bad that I heard one of the engineers say “Well, why not just dump fifty gallons of JP5 on it and toss a match?” It’s got to be bothersome when a civil engineer is willing to pour jet fuel on a plant and torch it to kill it!
Mint is one of the few plants I have not ever managed to kill, intentionally or otherwise.
We have our mint patch in a patch of ground right against the house. The patch of ground is otherwise completely surrounded by cement, which makes it a perfect “containment field.” I also have five or six different kinds of mint growing there, for variety, and I let them fight out which ones are dominant. (The spearmint and Kentucky Colonel mint seem to be the leaders, right now. The ginger mint didn’t make it even an entire season.)
I rase the mint completely a couple of times a year. Usually, around mid-summer it starts looking leggy and ugly, so I literally just cut it all back, and it’s back in usuable form in just a couple of weeks. Then I hack it all down again in the fall after the first freeze, and it comes back valiantly every spring.
You can prevent mint withdrawl by harvesting the leaves and drying them. Obviously this can’t help you know, but I understand that you have winter up there. Yes, they aren’t quite as good as the fresh, but they are much better than no mint at all. I cut whole shoots, take off the individual leaves, and spread them out on towels on top of the 'frige’rator for a day or two. Then when they are crispy, stack them in a canister of some sort.
Then for fun, repeat with catnip (also a mint) and try to make the cat tell the canisters apart while begging for catnip in the kitchen.
Hydrangia? Are you sure you don’t mean hydrilla?
Unless you’re making tea, I find freezing mint much preferable to drying it. I rinse it off, strip the leaves, stuff them into ziplock bags, and squeeze all the air out before I put them in the freezer. When I want to make, say, a yoghurt-mint sauce to go with a spicy Indian curry, I break out some frozen mint. Once it’s frozen, it’s really easy to chop up because it’s so brittle. I think freezing preserves the flavor better than drying. YMMV
I thought it was awfully odd that someone was trying to kill pond-dwelling hydrangia.
Thanks for the mint tips! I will try them out as soon as it grows back.
I went down last night to find another sprig for a feta salad and the few remaining stalks (they escaped the carnage by being hidden within another plant, it looks like the ignorant landlords identified a weed as a useful plant, and all the mint that’s hidden in it survivied) were starting to go to seed. So it looks like maybe they did us a favour in the end.
But if only I had known ahead of time I could have frozen/dried it, instead of it going to the landfill.
I killed mint once by (accidentally) pouring hot deep-frying oil on it. The poor mint. I also got a second degree burn in the process so I was punished for the mint slaughter. 
Yup, I usually put it in drinks. And I have a very small freezer. I’ve actually never tried freezing it.