Video:How to Grow an Herbal Tea Garden

Transcript:How to Grow an Herbal Tea Garden

Hi, I'm Geri Laufer, horticulturist on behalf of Crabapple Landscape Experts, a landscape maintenance company in metro Atlanta, Georgia, and today we're going to be talking about herbal tea gardens.

Types of Herbal Tea

Many herbs can be used for tea. They have a number of benefits. You can grow them yourself. I'm also growing in my garden regular green or black tea, which is a camellia relative, it's camellia sinennsis or Chinese camellia. And this makes the regular black tea that we're used to. But I'm also growing sage, which is a great calming herb. Mint tea is wonderful as a digestive after a nice meal. Chamomile tea will put you right to sleep. Lemon balm tea is such an easy-to-grow herb. It grows and seeds everywhere. If you're not too careful, you'll have plenty to give to your friends.

Preparing Soil for Tea Garden

Prepare the soil by digging it up. Adding compost to the soil. Compost is great for the soil whether you have clay soil and sandy soil. It adds organic matter and nutrients to your soil, you can't go wrong. If your soil is acid in nature like the eastern half of the country, you might want to add some pulverized lime. And mix it all in thoroughly.

Harvesting Tea From Garden

After you plant the herbs, allowing enough space for each one to reach full maturity, you can mulch over the surface to keep the weeds down. When you're ready to harvest the tea, you take some shears out in the garden and cut back, leave about a 1/3 of the plant growing and that part will re-sprout and re-grow, and we will harvest the top 2/3 for making our teas.

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