Okay, so I just started gardening for the heck of it about a month ago, when my summer vacations where underway. My mom had just bought this GIGANTIC bag of miracle-gro from home depot, and so I told her that I'd like to grow some sweet smelling mint using some of that soil. I mean, I'd grown up seeing my grandpa grow a ton of tasty stuff by doing nothing except plugging a few seeds into the soil, and then hosing them for 'bout 5 minutes every morning, so I figured I could handle a single plant of mint, without too much trouble. After buying a tiny spearmint plant in those cute black-plastic-cup-thingies, I found a nice black utility bucket, filled it up with miracle-gro, and planted the mint in it. I put the mint bucket in our ground-floor balcony........ and then, kind of left it there for a while. Honestly, I really didn't pay too much attention to it( although I DO know that mum watered it with regularity) until about 2 weeks ago, from which time I started to take better care of it (or so I thought...). In the beginning of these 2 weeks, I really didn't find anything alarming, and I figured that the mint was in pretty good shape. Then, I got the brilliant idea of placing the bucket right outside our balcony, where the sun could reach it pretty much all day long, so that the mint could grow much faster. Unfortunately, this also meant that I payed EVEN LESS attention to it than I had been, considering that, to really look into the bucket, I'd have to go out the door, circle half way around the house to reach the bucket, and then walk all the way back in (I know,I know; its doable, but what can I say-I can get pridy lazy...). Finally though, after 'bout maybe 4-5-6 days ago, I brought them in.....and needless to say, I did not see the amazing growth I had wanted to suprise myself with. They had clearly been getting steadily getting worse.
By that, I mean:

1) several leaves had tiny bite marks in them (I once removed a snail from in there, but when i brought them in from outside the balcony, I didn't see any insect or creature in there at all)

2)there was a fair amount of discoloration (By this I mean that a substantial amount of leaves turned purple, several of them turned yellow & pale-ish, and some even completely brown);infact, a whole half-a-stem turned completely brown and kinda just fell off, and keep in mind: there really WEREN'T A WHOLE LOTTA LEAVES TO BEGIN WITH!!!

3) On top of all that it came to me, that the mint plant HAD BARELY GROWN AT ALL IN THE PAST 2-3 WEEKS!!!! The small leaves either stayed small, or got discolored and eventually fell off. I'm pretty sure my mom plucked off the biggish leaves though, leaving me to look at a fairly runty-looking plant.

I imagine that one reason may have been that it had not been getting enough water - I read that mint plants like damp soil, and I hadn't watered it at all when it was outside the balcony, since it had rained several times in that period of time. Basically,I really just need to KNOW WHATS GOING ON, and how to make my mint plant healthy again and start the 'crazy' growth that ppl say is typical of the mint (or online atleast they do). I've attached several pictures of the plant, and i have to say, it looks quite better in the pictures than it does in real life for some reason (and that's really saying something!)

Thanks a bunch to all of those who've actually managed to read through all that, and PLEASE post anything which you feel could be the culprit behind the painful looking state of my mint (other than myself, ofcourse;I already know that :) and how to better help it grow well. THX!!!!