Mint is a commonly grown herb in container gardens…

…but do you know the health benefits of this herb?

Well today, I’ll share some with you some ways that I use it and other ways that it can be used.

Common uses for mint

Soothes aches, pains and stomach problems
You can easily make mint tea by steeping mint leaves in hot water for a few minutes. This has been known to help with:

• Digestion
• Hiccups
• Farting
• Menstrual cramps
• Constricted muscles
• Other minor aches and pains

Antiseptic and antibacterial
“Mint possesses astringent, antiseptic, antibacterial, and antimicrobial properties,” said the Marketing Manager for an online herb company. “Peppermint is great for cleaning abrasions, cuts, burns and wounds. It’s even good for treating acne.- best when steeped with hot water and left to cool, then applied as an external rinse.”

Relieve headaches
If you are suffering from a headache or migraine, you can mash up mint leaves with some oil. Then apply the mixture to where you are feeling the pain.

Decongestant
“It’s also a decongestant and has expectorant and antiviral properties,” said the marketing manager. “Peppermint tea isn’t just a great stress reliever, it’s good for clearing respiratory issues, treating colds and helping to open up nasal and chest passages aided by its mentholated aroma.

I like adding a pouch of it to hot water or to my shower to infuse the steam with peppermint to help me breathe better when sick.”

Growing mint

Mint is an herb that you shouldn’t start from seed, and can easily transplant in your container garden.

When you harvest mint a certain way, you can promote even more growth.

You can get a mint transplant from your local nursery or a cutting from a friend.

Sound off

How do you use mint?

Health Benefits and Reasons to Grow Mint from Urban Organic Gardener

Which herbs should you start from seeds?

You can experiment and find out on your own…

…or you can read the rest of this post and save yourself the hassle.

If you want to save time and energy, continue reading.

Some herbs require too much of your time

There definitely is something fun about starting from seed. You get to take care of the seedling and watch it grow until you finally use. Like a child of yours.

No doubt on that.

But there are some herbs that are too much work and require too much of your precious time to start from seed and you’re better off buying transplants.

This is especially true because we are urban gardening in small spaces like our apartments and in containers. We have to maximize our space.

The herbs that experts say you shouldn’t start from seed

Bay Leaf
“Bay is extremely difficult to germinate because they must be fresh and viable, and must be stratified and kept moist,” said Briscoe White, the owner of an herb company. “That’s one of the reasons bays are in such high demand- they’re hard to find because they’re hard to germinate, have a low germination rate and grow extremely slowly.”

Lavender
“Lavender can be a little tricky because they’re both very slow growing from seed, which can lead to problems with disease or fungus, since the young plants are so susceptible,” said the White. “Lavender also is very finicky with moisture and because of its slow growth can be difficult to keep healthy.”

Flavored Mints
“Many kinds of flavored mints, like chocolate mint or orange mint, can’t be started from seed, only from cuttings,” said Fern from Life on the Balcony. “This is because they’re hybrid varieties that don’t come true to form when grown from seed.”

Rosemary
Rosemary is much like lavender and, “It can be frustrating to grow from seed because there are so many varieties,” said the White. “To ensure that you get a true variety, you’re best to take a cutting and propagate from that, rather than seed.”

“Rosemary is so much easier to start from a cutting or from a plant bought at the nursery,” added Fern.

White Sage
“White Sage is also difficult to germinate as it has a 10-15% germination rate and on top of that, just takes a lot of time to get growing,” said the owner. “The viability is so low, that we end up placing 10-12 seeds per cell to try to get enough plants to sprout.”

Where you can buy these herbs

You can get these herbs from

• Your local nursery

• A cutting from a friend

Sound off

What herbs are you growing or want to start growing?

5 Herbs You’ll Never Want to Start From Seed from Urban Organic Gardener

Deciding what to grow is an important decision.

It’s also the question that I get asked most often when people are starting their urban gardens.

To that question, I often respond with a series of questions that you need to ask yourself.

Here they are:

1. What’s the location that I am growing in?
2. How much sunlight does my space get?
3. What am I growing in?

Once you answer those three questions, your choices will automatically be narrowed down.

If you only get three hours of sunlight, your chances of growing cucumbers are small.

Then you can move on to the next set of questions to ask yourself:

1. What do I use most? If you are using a lot of something, you should consider growing it.
2. What do I like to eat? This might seem like an obvious question to ask, but it’s an important one. We are working with small spaces and need to get the most out of them. Why grow something that you don’t like to eat?
3. What makes the most $$$ sense? To me it’s herbs. At the grocery store you always have to buy a big bunch and only need a sprig or two of them.
4. What season is it? Certain herbs and vegetables will only grow in certain temperatures.

Once you answer those questions, you will have a clearer picker as to what you can grow.

How did you answer these questions?

Questions to Ask Yourself When Deciding What to Grow from Urban Organic Gardener

What can I grow?

That’s the most common question that I get asked.

First, you’ll have to decide on the location of your urban garden.

Then you’ll have to determine how much sunlight your garden space gets.

There are four main categories of sunlight:

• Full sun. 6+ hours of direct sunlight.

• Partial sun. 4-5 hours of direct sunlight.

• Partial shade. 2-4 hours of direct sunlight.

• Shade Less than 1 hour of direct sunlight.

Since we are living in urban environments, we have other structures that we are dealing with as well. Those can be adjacent buildings, over hangs and walls.

I would assume that most of us fall into the partial sun category and below.

Easily figure out how much sunlight you get

A simple way to figure out how much sunlight your space gets is to monitor it throughout the day.

All you have to do is pop outside for less than a minute every few hours and take some quick notes.

Start off with a quick sketch of your garden space. Section it off as the day progresses because the surrounding structures will cast shade in certain areas.

Here is a video of what the process looks like from my balcony garden:

Once you know how much sunlight your garden gets, the list of what you can grow has been narrowed down for you.

My balcony gets only three hours of direct sunlight. Based on that my selection is limited down to certain herbs and vegetables. This is why I’m growing a lot of greens.

Now you can repeat the same process and leave a comment below to let me know how much sunlight your urban garden gets.

How to Determine the Amount of Sunlight Your Garden Gets from Urban Organic Gardener

When you live in an apartment your space is limited.

That’s especially true when it comes to your garden.

We barely have room for furniture. Forget about tomatoes.

This is why it’s important to consider all options when deciding where to start your apartment vegetable garden.

Since a lot of apartment dwellers are renters as well, we need to take into consideration the costs involved and what our landlord will allow.

It ain’t no thang though because here are seven (7) spaces where you can start your apartment garden:

• Fire escape. This is where it all started for me in 2009. You can fit a few containers on the landing, but be sure to leave plenty of space for a footpath.

• Hand rails. I used these too on my fire escape to hang 10 soda bottle planters filled with mint, oregano, lettuces and more.

• Balcony or patio. This is what I had when I first moved to LA. I had about 10 containers out there. They lined up nicely on both sides allowing for a walkway down the middle.

• Walls. There are plenty of vertical garden planters out there right now. The thing with most of them is that you need to secure them to the walls, which might be an issue for some renters or landlords.

• Windowsill boxes. These are great to grow shallow rooted herbs and vegetables. Like the vertical planters they do need to be secured to the structure.

• Front or backyard. If you are on a lower level, this might be all you have. If you are renting, it’s unlikely that your landlord will allow you to rip up the lawn to start your garden. They might allow you to put some containers out there though.

• Along the side of the building. This is usually dead space that isn’t visible from anywhere and not being used. It is worth inquiring to find out if you can put containers out there to start your garden.

Where do you have or can you start your apartment garden?

7 Location Ideas for Apartment and Urban Gardens from Urban Organic Gardener

I’m going to be moving in the next couple of weeks.

Why does it matter and what’s it have to do with urban gardening?

Even though I’m moving into the apartment next door to mine, I am losing the balcony and the balcony garden.

Why should you care?

It matters because I will be growing in an all new location and using new methods including growing indoors using natural and grow lights and growing hydroponically.

So be sure to hit me up with your indoor and hydroponic questions.

Losing my balcony, but gaining more garden space

I am still going to be container gardening just in an all new location that I never thought of before.

When discussing the move with the landlord, he said that I could use the side of the building to put my containers.

It’s a much larger space and gets more sunlight.

Talk to your building manager or landlord

For those of you that don’t have a balcony, ledge or fire escape, ask your building managers or landlords if you can put some containers along the side of the building out of the way.

It will give you space to grow.

I thought I was going to lose space by moving, but I gained a lot more by asking a simple question.

Tell me what’s up

What spaces around your apartment can you ask your landlord to put some containers?

I’m Moving and Losing My Balcony Garden from Urban Organic Gardener

The strangest posts wind up causing some controversy.

It doesn’t make sense to me.

When I wrote about why having an emergency seed bank is important, I didn’t quite get the reaction that I’d expect.

I received emails, Facebook comments and Tweets saying that I couldn’t be more wrong about storing the seeds and that freezing them was a horrible idea.

I’ll admit that I have never frozen seeds before and then used them. It is a recommendation that I’ve seen countless time before.

So I did a bit of research and here’s some excerpts from sites:

Last year we planted a variety of different seeds that we had put in the freezer over 10 years ago and forgotten about and they came up just fine. They were just in ziplock bags. — via Survivalist Boards

Seeds dried to a low moisture content with silica gel and then stored in a freezer can usually retain viability for many years. — via HowToSaveSeeds.com

Freezing seeds will put the embryo into suspended animation reducing its need to consume the sugars that are encased in the seed. This increases it’s storage life immensely… — via Ready Nutrition

Takeaways for Storing Your Seeds in the Freezer

The main takeaways that I got in my research were the following:

• Make sure the seeds are dry when placed in the freezer. Using a silica gel pack can help with this.

• Put the seeds in an airtight container. This can be a mason jar or even a ziplock bag. Vacuum sealing works well too.

• Allow the seeds to thaw before planting. These are for long-term storage, but good to keep this tip in mind.

How do you store your seeds for the short or long-term?

Get 10% Off an Emergency Seed Bank

Don’t forget that today, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, is the last day to get 10% an All-In-One Emergency Seed Bank from SeedsNow.com.

All you have to do is click here and use the discount code giveme10now to get 10% off.

Storing Your Seeds For the Long-Term…in the Freezer from Urban Organic Gardener

There were 266 comments left in the All-In-One Mega Seed Bank contest courtesy of SeedsNow.com

Thank you to everyone that left a comment and entered.

To choose the winner, I went to Random.org.

Entered the number range of 1 to 266 and hit “Generate.” The number generated was 133.

The comments were ordered from newest to oldest and counted down. The 133rd and winning comment was from “paulitapera” and was:

Every crisis offers a beautiful opportunity for transformation. Having an emergency seed bank is important because by reclaiming the gift of seeds that our ancestors have given us, it empowers us to be the change, the solution, from the bottom up.

Limited Discount Offer to Everyone

Since SeedsNow.com was so happy with the response and all of the comments that were left as to why having an emergency seed is so important, they are offering up a 10% discount on their All-In-One Mega Seed Bank (which is currently $99.99) from today Monday, January 16 – Wednesday, January 18, 2012 when you make your purchase.

You just have to click here and use the code “giveme10now” when making your purchase.

Thanks again to everyone who entered and SeedsNow.com for the contest. Be on the lookout for another contest coming next month.

All-In-One Mega Seed Bank Winner from Urban Organic Gardener