On Mint
On my first Kentucky Derby Day at college – my first outside of Louisville – I was making mint juleps. I scavenged across the geometric interplay of bluegrass and concrete on campus and investigated low-lying, shady, and moist groves, places mint might be growing. For all of the maintained landscaping, there was no mint to be found. With simple syrup, powdered sugar, ice cubes, and bourbon at the ready, I drove to Kroger only to find a sold out void in the mint section. I discovered that day that it’s hard to enjoy a mint julep without the mint.
Mint grows much like a weed does in this region, and is considered invasive for its prolific growth. Back in Louisville, it grows in the herb garden just outside my back porch. From its original stand on one side of the stairs, its domain has expanded underneath the stairs and up the other side. Each May, without fail, it sends up shoots between the brick of the house and the wood of the stairs. These city sprigs have long stalks, a sign of the plant’s efforts to find light from beneath the darkness of the stairs.
That growth and most other mint stands grew from what was once a single mother plant. Every year, we cut it back, dig some of it out to keep it from outcompeting with the rosemary, sage, thyme, and oregano planted nearby. Mint sure might seem like a weed, for how quickly it grows and how swiftly it reproduces, overtaking a garden plot.
On the first Saturday in May, however, we can smile at even in the wiliest of mint stands and be glad we didn’t ever cut it back too much. In this region, mint can never be a weed. Neighborhood mint stands planted in alleyways and in backyards assume their best purpose at this time of year, when their growth cycle aligns with that of The Derby. Fresh and green mint shoots up out of the tepid ground in early spring, providing the bite and substance for a spring garden cocktail. With each successive year after my mint-less julep, I look at every bushy stand and am thankful for mint’s invasive abundance.
On Derby Planting
On that first 60-degree day this past spring, I was ready to plant. Newly purchased seeds in hand, I itched to sow them into the still saturated ground. However, my mind told me to wait. As every Louisvillian knows, Derby weekend is planting weekend, and that wasn’t for at least 10 weeks. This aphorism of local gardeners’ knowledge is unwritten, and always spoken. It’s in the almanac of conversation, of neighbors who remind one another that Derby weekend – not the first weekend in May, but Derby weekend – is for planting in your summer garden.
Cold-tolerant greens, radishes, and beets are great for a spring garden, but heat-loving plants like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, melons, summer squash, and cucumbers are for planting on Derby weekend. With our final frost date somewhere in mid-April, by early May, city gardeners can plant their summer vegetables without worry that a rogue frost will wipe out their seedlings. In early May, there’s still plenty of time left in the summer for most plants to grow and mature to fruit.
If you’re averse to crowds, and a mint julep after a day’s work in the garden is more your speed, you might take up your trowel this Derby weekend, and bet on the soil and the seeds you’re putting into it. I hear tomatoes give back at least 20-1 odds.
– Caroline Stephens
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As a classmate of the author’s father, I’m shocked to discover the source of his gray hair! A young, precocious, under-aged, freshman daughter away at college – mixing mint juleps rather than creating term papers? It’s a wonder he has ANY hair left… Very nice, Ms. Stephens!
I started growing mint as a 6th grader. The spearmint variety at first, then peppermint. I sold it to a couple of local taverns in my neighborhood around Derby Time. Some 40 years later, it is impossible to get rid of and has taken over one of my front flower beds. Even a complete “re-dirting” of the area hasn’t killed it.
In fact, it just laughed at me and came back stronger.
I still sell it each year…but to a huge private party for Oaks an Derby.
Last year I bet on tomatoes going off at 20 to 1. This year I’m betting on squirrels at even odds. Nice big fat tomatoe fed ones. Maybe with a curry sauce.