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One of the best things about growing mint is that the plants can be extremely productive, but how much mint can you actually get from one plant?
As a general rule, one mint plant can produce enough leaves for up to four people if it has at least 12 inches of horizontal growing space. Technically, there is no limit to how much mint you can get from one plant since mint spreads indefinitely horizontally and is only limited by horizontal growing space.
There are a lot of factors that affect how much you can harvest from one mint plant, so it is impossible to give you a precise answer. I can, however, give you a good estimate and teach you how to get more out of your mint plant as well as how many mint plants you should grow per person, so keep reading.
How Much Mint Can You Get From One Plant? (What to Expect)
There is no limit to how much you can harvest from one mint plant since it can grow indefinitely, but this is as close to an answer as we can get.
A mint plant usually provides two to three full harvests per growing season if cut back to just above the ground. The yield of the harvests depends on the size of the mint plant, but a good rule of thumb is that one mint plant can provide enough mint leaves for up to four people.
Of course, you need to know how to take proper care of your mint if you want it to provide enough leaves for four people. Luckily mint is not so hard to grow and take care of.
The most important factors that determine how productive a mint plant is are the growing conditions (sunlight, watering, soil type, nutrients, etc.) and horizontal growing space. Mint roots don’t grow so deep but instead wide, so use a wide pot for growing mint. The ideal pot size is 12 inches (25 cm) or larger.
To get as much out of your mint plants as possible, you could also grow them in the ground, although I don’t recommend that. If you do this, the plant will almost certainly grow really big and give your a lot of leaves, which is great. What is not so great, though, is that it is really difficult to get rid of again, as it will spread really fast and probably take over parts of your garden that it wasn’t supposed to.
If you want to read more about whether growing mint in a pot or directly in the ground is best for you, read this post.
Growing space and conditions are the most basic things your mint needs to be productive. Once you have taken care of those, you are off to a very good start, but there is more you can do to significantly increase your mint plants’ productivity. Keep reading to learn about that.
How to Get More Out of Your Mint Plant (Easy Tips)
Good growing conditions and enough growing space are the two most basic requirements for growing mint. Once those are taken care of, you will most likely get a decent amount of leaves from your plant, but there are a couple of things you can that will multiply your mint production several times. What makes that even better is that it is really easy.
You might already know about it, but if you don’t, pruning and propagation are two things you should learn about. If you have never heard about them before, don’t worry, because they are actually pretty simple and can boost the production of your plants, including mint, by a huge amount if done right.
Pruning and propagation are the keys to multiplying the production of your mint several times. Pruning means cutting your mint plant in a way that promotes new growth and propagation means taking those cuttings and growing them as new plants.
I have written an easy guide for pruning mint plants, which you can find here.
To propagate your mint, just take some of the cuttings from when you prune it, remove the leaves from the bottom half of the stems and place them in water with the top half above water. After a few weeks, they will have grown roots and can be planted and grown as new mint plants.
How Many Mint Plants to Grow per Person (Easy Overview)
Figuring out how many mint plants you need for a certain number of people is not always so easy. To make it easy, though, I have made a table to give you an easy overview.
| Number of people | Number of mint plants needed |
| 1-2 | 1 |
| 3-4 | 1 |
| 5-6 | 2 |
| 7-8 | 2 |
| 9-10 | 3 |
| 11-12 | 3 |
As you can see, a single mint plant can provide enough for up to four people, so divide however many people you need mint for by four to know how many mint plants you need to grow.
It is really important that I mention that these numbers assume that your mint is growing under the right conditions. You can learn precisely what conditions mint thrives at in my other article on this link.
One of the things that make mint plants so productive is the fact that they regrow after being harvested. I will explain more about that now, so keep reading.
