Peppermint

The first crop of mint is harvested in the latter part of August, when the plants are in full flower, and the gathering continues until about the middle of September, the stills running night and day until all the mint is disposed of. The first crop is usually cut with a scythe, as mowing machines do not work well on soft cultivated land. The succeeding crops are cut with a mowing machine or sweep-rake reaper. The highest yield per acre and the best quality of oil are obtained from the first year’s crop. Sometimes, if the weather conditions have been very favorable, a second cutting is made. The yield of oil from peppermint obtained from the same field sometimes varies very much, the condition of the atmosphere seeming to exert an influence upon it, as it is said that mint cut after a warm and humid night will yield more oil than that cut after a cool and dry night. It requires about 330 pounds of dried peppermint to produce 1 pound of oil, and the yield of oil from an acre ranges from 12 to 50 pounds.

If the mint crop has been grown on muck land, all that is necessary after the crop has been harvested is to plow up the land and turn the runners under for a new crop. If grown on upland, after the second year’s crop is in, or, at the most, after the third year’s harvest, the land is plowed and then given up to other crops. Peppermint exhausts the land, and it is necessary to practice rotation of crops for about five years in order to put the land in condition if it is desired to use it again for peppermint cultivation.

After the plants are cut they are usually placed in windrows until they are dried, but are not allowed to become so dry as to permit the leaves to shatter off, and are then taken to the distillery. Some growers believe that if the plants are allowed to dry there will be a smaller oil content owing to the escape of some of the oil into the atmosphere, and so have the plants brought to the distillery in the green state; but Mr. A. M. Todd[5] is of the opinion that no loss of oil will result from drying, his experiments along this line showing that the dry plants can be distilled three times as rapidly as the green plants, and that a larger quantity of oil may be obtained. He states that—

The smaller producers, who have no stills of their own, have their mint crop hauled to the nearest peppermint distillery, where it is distilled for them at a cost of 25 cents per pound of oil.