Six flavorful mints
Mint through the season
Cool mojitos

Crush a mint sprig between your fingers and you’ll release that distinctive cool, green scent that makes your mouth water irresistibly. As with all herbs, fragrance means flavor is present. Mint’s brisk aroma also chases away the sluggishness that can overtake you when temperatures soar, as herbalists first noted hundreds of years ago. “The very smell of it reanimates the spirit,” said the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder back in the first century A.D. So take Pliny’s advice this summer: Boost your vitality and refresh your senses. Plant some mint.

Don’t limit yourself to one kind, though. Of the dozens of mints available at nurseries, each has a unique flavor. You might select ‘Moroccan’ mint to add to fresh salads, ‘Kentucky Colonel’ for making mojitos (a light rum drink from Cuba), or Egyptian mint to spice up tabbouleh. Nipping on ‘Chocolate’ mint can almost fool you into thinking you’ve had dessert.

Mint can be invasive in the ground. To keep it in bounds, herb specialist V.J. Billings suggests growing it in low, wide bowls — ideal for this shallow-rooted plant. Following her tip, we grew our mints in 18-inch-wide bowls last year and harvested our best crop ever. Billings’s mail-order nursery, Mountain Valley Growers (or 559/338-2775), also supplied our plants.