Richi

I know that the menthol in natural mint is a good cooling, aesthetic soother, which is good for the throat, lungs, stomach, ect. Not to mention it tastes good too.

Anyone cultivate mint out there for its medicinal value? How do you optimize menthol amount?

PorkHunt

I tend to pull out a lot of the mint from growing into my echinacea patch. Now I find it easier to move the echinacea into pots and let the mint be.

I think the way some manufacturers extract the oil from the mint is by using a solvent of some sort.

The other way is to distill it. Thats the way I usually extract aromatic oils. I usually crush the leaves and drop them into distilled water. Not bottled, not filtered but I think filtered or bottled should be ok. I then distill it in a distiller. I wont go into that process as it can cause injury if you dont know what you're doing. The oil that comes out though, you cannot use it directly. You definitely must not ingest any of it. You must dilute for lotions, and you only need a drop or two in soaps or aromatherapy burners.

Infact, if you want to eat it, just chew on some fresh leaves or add it into your cooking or teas. If you're going to use it as a rub, my mother would dry the leaves and then immerse it into some plain white vinegar. She made lots of different types of rubs that way. She would put lots of different dried herbs in a pickling jar and leave it for a while in a coolish dark place.

Higher Logic

Wouldn't that be great to grow marijuana and have it take on the taste characteristics of mint. You'd have one cool, smooth, mentholly (is that a word, haha, probably not) smoke

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webeblzr

Hey, what about adding fresh mint to your curing jars.....H'mmmm I never considered that. Probably would not infuse, but may leave a nice minty aroma.

Richi

Yea, if you stash your marijuana with mint or mints it absorbs some of that minty taste, but would be cool if one day there was a marijuana-mint hybrid.

megatrich

I belive it's only a matter of time before someone in a 'legal' country isolates the canibanoid genes and splices them into other types of plants. THC laden spearamint, or perhaps basil. It's plenty possible now, someone just needs the $ to do it. Splicing THC genes into all sorts of common plants would be a good way to force legalization - by making it impossible to fight. Not to mention the new possible flavors of smokables that could be created.

One could probably make a GE plant that produces THC, morphine and coca all at the same time and menthol flavored to boot. Just keep it away from SNL parties...

I've had pot that'd had salvia extract added. Didn't affect the taste, but OH MY GOD... I'd imagine the same could be done w/ spearamint - or just mix in a few mint leaves. I've smoked with arab guys that always mixed it with tobacco, including menthol. Apearantly they traditionally do quite a bit of mixing of their smokeables for various effects.

Mendrel

Needless to say 'splicing in some genes' is a bit harder than it may sound. You'd have to recreate the entire cannabinoid pathway in the new plant. Rather difficult to get it under the correct genetic control but yes it is possible. Splicing the genes into new plants wouldn't force legalization but if you randomly released such a transformed species you may face terrorism charges? Who knows what they'd come up with to prosecute you for. Eco-terrorism maybe? Then you'd have all the hippies who are against GM anything haunting you and you know what happens when hippies swarm.....a hippy music festival.

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Richi

Anyone know if you can smoke the mint leavs you find in mint tea bags? Or would you be better off growing it yourself, curing and drying.

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