Tea Garden: Chamomile

I love tea. My husband makes me different teas for my menstrual cycle every month. So, this year I decided I wanted to grow my own tea garden. I was most excited about growing my own chamomile. Here are a few important things I learned about growing and harvesting chamomile.

Chamomile needs direct sunlight to germinate. I used vermiculite to help keep the seeds on the top of the soil. It took a while to grow but it has been flowering continuously for almost two months and the plant is still very healthy and producing a lot.

Something pretty gross that I learned about growing chamomile is that thrips, a very tiny bug, loves chamomile. It took a while to figure out the best way to clean the bugs off of the flowers. I fill a jar with water, and occasionally, I use a small amount of thieves fruit & veggie cleaner. I allow the chamomile to sit in the water in the covered jar, for about an hour. Then I scoop the flowers out of the top of the jar. I put the flowers into the salad spinner and rinse them very well then I spin them just enough to dry them but not ruin the flowers. This helped remove any additional bugs. I flush the water in the jar down the toilet because bugs gross me out a lot.

The first few times we picked chamomile we had to clean it multiple times because we would find bugs later. But now that we figured out cleaning it, we don’t have as many problems. We use a tray with parchment to dry the chamomile with sunlight and air. It takes about 2-3 days to fully dry.

Once the chamomile is completely dry, I store it in a jar and keep it out of sunlight. It is a very time consuming process, but I am so excited about having my own tea and knowing it came from organic seeds and has zero pesticides on it.