Mint having yellow spots and turning brown

[uaiko]

Dear all,

My mint is not dojng well. I have it outside in the pot. Its partially in the shade, few houts a day having full sun ( as the sun is moving). It was growing well with very nice dark green leaves, but some weeks ago I could see yellow spots n the leaves and some leaves turned brown already. I have two types of mint. One is of "regular type" antoher is "grapefruit mind". Both having same problem.
I'm watering it daily, they have good drainage.
Do you have an idea how can I help it?

[uaiko]

Anyone?

[rainbowgardener]

Since no one has responded, I will make a stab at it, though my most honest answer would be I don't know. But it looks like your mint has some kind of fungal disease. The only one that is particularly common in mint is mint rust.



It's not good news. Take off all the affected leaves and trash them, not in the compost pile. Then you can try spraying the whole plant, including undersides of leaves, and the soil with a baking soda solution (1 T baking soda, plus a few drops of vegetable oil and a few drops of liquid soap in a gallon of water) or Neem oil. You will have to keep treating it every week or two.

But if that doesn't work, you will just have to pitch the whole plant AND the soil and clean the pot with bleach.

For prevention, be sure your mint has good air circulation, keep the stems thinned out, and don't water the plant only the soil.

[uaiko]

thanx a lot for the advise. Will try it. Hmmm, you wrote I should only water the soil. I was thinking mint likes shower, so I was showering it regularly

[innercitygarden]

My peppermint in a container is not doing all that well either. At one point it had an aphid infestation which I remedied with a homebrew insect repellent and chopping it back. It grew back healthy and so far bug free, but leaves on the older stems turn grey and I have to pull them off- I don't have much to harvest. I mostly use peppermint for a steam to relieve certain kinds of headaches and oil infusions for the feet. My suspicion is that I need to depot and trim out some of the older root and rhizomes- the leaves coming in on newer surface rhizomes is rich green. This has been in the pot fir over a year- is it crowding itself out? My spearmint (the better eating mint in my humble opinion) is in a smaller pot right now but seems to have the same kind of issue with dying leaves on older stems and healthy growth on the newer. What do y'all think of my amateur idea?

[catgrass]

My mint does the same thing. sometimes it has spots, sometimes not. I just cut mine back severely and it always comes back. I think maybe it's a cycle it goes through.

[rainbowgardener]

Mint does eventually get crowded in pots and benefit from repotting and division.

It is also quite prone to getting a bit of yellowed and spotted leaves. It probably is some kind of fungal disease, but as long as it is just a few leaves, the plant can fight it off and you don't really need to do anything.