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Mint plant in pot
in Fruit & veg
Hi,
A friend was clearing out his garden and offered me this mint plant. It looks a bit sad and I felt sorry for it so I said I’d take it! No idea of the variety. As you can see there are some nice green leaves but many of them are very small, and there are a lot of dead and woody stems too.
What should I do to help the plant recover? Just cut out all the woody bits and leave the green bits behind, or cut everything off at the soil level and let it start again (or just pop the whole lot into the compost??).
if salvageable, I presume it will need feeding at this stage, as it has clearly been neglected. What sort of feed etc should I add.
Thanks, as ever, for any advice
A friend was clearing out his garden and offered me this mint plant. It looks a bit sad and I felt sorry for it so I said I’d take it! No idea of the variety. As you can see there are some nice green leaves but many of them are very small, and there are a lot of dead and woody stems too.
What should I do to help the plant recover? Just cut out all the woody bits and leave the green bits behind, or cut everything off at the soil level and let it start again (or just pop the whole lot into the compost??).
if salvageable, I presume it will need feeding at this stage, as it has clearly been neglected. What sort of feed etc should I add.
Thanks, as ever, for any advice

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No idea if this is the "right" thing to do, but it's worked for me in the past. Take it out and divide it into 2 or 3 sections. It's likely that the roots have got themselves into a fair old tangle so you might need something like an old bread knife to cut through the clump. Cut down the stalks, keep the fresher outer sections and dispose of the middle.
Pot up the clumps using fresh compost and put somewhere sheltered. At this time of year l wouldn't give up any feed, although others might say differently. I've revived several old mint plants this way.
I wouldn't advise planting it directly into the garden, mint has a nasty habit of spreading like wildfire.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It will always go scraggly after flowering (I do let it flower because I find moths love it). If you cut it all back you quickly get fresh growth.