Growing Tea

Growing tea herbs is about the lowest-maintenance gardening operation you could imagine. Bee balm, mint, and anise hyssop--like the Golden Jubilee variety shown here--thrive in even marginal soils, spreading to sometimes invasive proportions, which you can contain by harvesting frequently (or assaulting with the lawnmower if necessary). Lemon balm and most mints will also grow happily even in partial shade. If you are a rogue urban gardener, plant tea herbs around street trees or in empty disturbed lots (where you will not interfere with native ecosystems -- don't ever plant in parklands or healthy wild places) and harvest as they spread, but monitor carefully to make sure the plants have not been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides before your harvest.

More unusual tea herb options include thyme and sage, which makes a wonderful broth-like tea sure to sooth a winter cold (add honey and a quarter onion to each cup for a truly powerful cold fighter). Yarrow blossom tea warms you right up when you have the chills. Raspberry leaf tea is a traditional treatment to strengthen women's health. Rose and lavender blossoms sweeten the teapot with scents of summer.

Cut your tea herbs back a few times in the spring to encourage branching, then harvest again while the plants are blooming and include the blossoms in your tea for a cheery touch of color and scent. Hang small bundles of the cut herb stems (I use a small rubber band to hold them together, as wrapped string will slip once the stems dry and shrink) in a shady, airy place out of rain and wind to dry, or use a dehydrator. Just keep a careful watch on the herbs in a dehydrator, they usually only need an hour or so to dry thoroughly, and after that you are losing flavor.

Strip the dried leaves off the stems and store them in glass jars, out of direct sunlight. Use about a teaspoon of dried leaf per cup of boiling water, but feel free to mix and match herbs or adjust the quantities to taste. Save the peels from organically grown citrus fruit through the year and dry those as well, adding a chunk to your tea in winter when citrus is quite expensive to add a flavorful zing to your tea.