Meet the Herb: Mint — Growing Spearmint & Peppermint at InVine Botanicals, Tallahassee FL

Mint might be the most familiar herb in our whole garden, but there's a lot more to it than you'd think. I'm here at InVine Botanicals, in Tallahassee, Florida, and today we're getting to know the mints we grow and the balms they go into. When we say mint, we really mean a few different plants — mostly spearmint and peppermint, both members of the big, fragrant mint family.

They look similar, but they're not quite the same. Spearmint is the sweeter, milder one, with a soft, rounded scent. Peppermint is sharper and cooler, with more of that classic, bright menthol bite.

We grow both, because each one brings something a little different. We grow ours right here in our Tallahassee garden, where it thrives in the Florida warmth and even sends up these little flowers in the summer that the bees absolutely love. Mint is famously vigorous.

It spreads by underground runners, and given room, it will happily fill it. So we grow ours in containers and dedicated beds to keep it healthy without letting it take over the whole garden. The upside of all that vigor is that one established mint plant gives us cuttings all season long, which is exactly what a small-batch maker wants.

It grows right alongside the rest of our herbs — the rosemary, the lemon balm, the basil, and the calendula — all in the same garden, all tended by hand. And mint has been with us a long time. It's one of the oldest cultivated herbs on earth, grown across the world for thousands of years — as much for its scent and its flavor as for anything else.

When it's ready, we harvest the mint by hand, cutting the stems with shears, a handful at a time, usually just before it flowers when the leaves are at their most fragrant. Like everything in this garden, it's cut selectively, by hand, so the plant stays healthy and keeps producing right through the season. Nothing here is rushed, and nothing is taken that we don't need.

We only ever cut enough for the next small batch. And it goes straight into a basket and indoors, fresh, while that aroma is at its absolute peak. Then, like all of our botanicals, the mint is dried slowly — never rushed with high heat, which would cook off the very oils we want to keep.

It dries on screen racks for several days in our climate-controlled room — around seventy-six degrees, at low humidity, and in the dark. That's what protects the bright green color and the aromatic oils in the leaves. We turn and tend the racks by hand, checking them until the mint is fully dry and ready for the oil.

It dries alongside the rest of the harvest — the rosemary, the calendula, the roses — all coming in off the beds together. And honestly, that cooling, aromatic scent is a big part of why we grow so much of it. It's the kind of smell that wakes you right up.

Once it's dried and slow-infused into organic oil over several weeks, that fresh, lively character carries right through into everything mint goes into. And mint goes into several of our products. The first is our Breathe Free Balm, where the mints are blended together with rosemary and lemon balm.

We grow both spearmint and peppermint for it, and it's easily one of the most aromatic balms we make. Mint is also one of the herbs in our Muscle Revive Balm, alongside ginger, cayenne, turmeric, and rosemary. And spearmint, specifically, is the star of our Spearmint Hand Cream — bright, clean, and unmistakable.

In every one of them, the mint is a whole herb we grew, harvested, and dried ourselves, right here in the garden — not a fragrance added at the end. That's really the whole idea behind InVine. Everything we grow is grown by hand and dried slowly, long before it ever becomes skincare.

So that's mint — spearmint and peppermint, grown and dried right here in our Tallahassee garden. You can find all of our garden-grown balms and creams at invinebotanicals dot com. Thanks for spending a little time in the garden with us.