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Hi. I have 2 questions that I hope to get some advice.

1. I have a peppermint plant that looks very sickly. Its planted in a pot and there's a shallow tray beneath that contains water. I noticed there's a few white tiny flies and I have been diligently spraying the leaves with neem oil to control it. I really don't know what is the problem. You can see from the pic that the leaves should be big and nice but instead I have small tiny leaves that turns yellow and brown. Please advice how I can nurse it back to health.

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2. I have some stem cuttings of basil, parsley, sage and lemon balm (as in pic). I dip each stem in root hormone and soaked it in water. After two days, I notice the parsley leave is turning yellowish (see pic) and there are some black spots appearing on the sage leaves. Should I just transfer them directly to a potted soil or continue let soak till roots appear? My original idea is to leave them as they are until they re-root.

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Is that only one peppermint plant in that pot? It looks to me like a bunch of plants that may be overcrowded and not allowing for full root growth.

Not all plants will root in water. Strawberries need soil to form roots. Sprout your seeds in soil and allow them to grow there.

mtmickey wrote:Is that only one peppermint plant in that pot? It looks to me like a bunch of plants that may be overcrowded and not allowing for full root growth.

No. I sprinkled some peppermint seeds in that pot a couple of months back and left it as it is since then. So ya it is a bunch of plants...

So, what should I do? Remove the plants from the soil and re-pot it again? How many should I grow in the pot? I thoughts its okay to leave it as it is coz the stems look spineless. Is it meant to be like that or is it meant to grow straight up?

The peppermints look like they need to be transplanted to larger pots. Less than ten per pot should be nice and thin them if they become over crowded.
Seedlings often become thin and fall over because of too little light, too much or too little water, disease, or a lack of air circulation. This is hard to avoid.

The cuttings from different types of plants should be in separate containers. If one kind of plant goes bad, they may all quickly go bad. Lemon Balm and Basil should be the easiest to root but Parsley and Sage are much harder. I like to start cuttings in water and transfer them to soil after a week or two whether they have roots or not.

Last weekend, I decided to take the peppermints out and repot them. This time, I picked 5 or 6 of them and pot them back with mixture of vermicast. Its growing well so far, no more tiny leaves dying out like before.

I have also transferred the other herbs into soil. You are right, sage and parsley is harder to root, two died on me and the remaining are struggling. Putting my peppermint and lemon balm next to each other, I can't help but see the close similarity of the leaves between the two.

The peppermint looks good but ditto the spacing comments left by the observant eyes.

I have found that Organic herbs, including mint, root faster because they are not sprayed with chemicals that inhibit roots. I also cut the ends off each of the pieces and trim them once a week or so. This will plump up the leaves if they seem to dry up.

I try to change the water daily and then they root just fine. Once the hair roots are about 1-2 inches, I plant them in soil and put them in a sunny cool place. If they are in the house - they get the little white bugs - outside, they don't get them at all.

sps

Sounds like you're doing everything right with the peppermint, but I'm also on board with the bigger pot. If that doesn't work, then you can go from there.