Thursday, February 7, 2013

Calming Chamomile Tea!

So my choice of tea today was homemade.  I made a couple different combinations of tea blends several years ago.  I had a really great harvest of chamomile back then as well.  Here is a small paragraph from my List of Annual Herbs about German chamomile.

German Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is a wonderful apple-scented plant with daisy like flowers that grows to about 2’ tall.  It grows easily from seed which should be sown in the early spring and again in summer for a succession of harvests.  Harvest flowers when their petals start to turn downward to use fresh or dried in teas.  The plants fade quickly after flowering.  In my experience if you harvest the flowers, they keep producing more flowers.  If you let the flowers go by meaning not harvesting them, the plant will die.  So you have to be on top of harvesting the flowers especially in the hot weather.  It is a front of the border plant. 

If you click on the mug to the right, it will show you the process of filling the bags.  After so many years the flavor of the chamomile was still excellent.  Very calming tea after a long day.  We got my Herb Companion and some of my Herb Quarterly magazines moved to a cabinet in the dining room where I work.  More convenient for me.   Maybe I'll get to read some different ones that I've not yet read and, of course, I'll share what I read with you.  It was a partly sunny day here.  We are just getting a minor storm tomorrow.  Hope New England doesn't get battered like they are forecasting.  Stay safe and warm wherever you may be.  Talk to you later.

5 comments:

PeggyR said...

I love Chamomile tea. Do you get our weather or theirs? Sometimes it depends with us, but this time it is not suppose to be bad...we'll see and I hope they are wrong about the east coast.

FlowerLady Lorraine said...

Chamomile is a nice relaxing tea, great when you are feeling stressed or to have before bed for a nice nights' sleep.

How neat that you have your own chamomile teabags. :-)

Have a great weekend ~ FlowerLady

Lemon Verbena Lady said...

We get yours this time, Peggy. We are far enough west that we will get a rain snow mix with around an inch or a bit more. Yes, I hope they are wrong as you are. Take care. xxoo

I'm a lucky girl, FL! Really it tasted very good after we organized some things around here. xxoo

Thanks ladies for stopping by as usual. xxoo LVL

Barbara said...

Chamomile does the trick when I want a good night's sleep and I need a bit of calming down for whatever reason! I also like passion flower and lemon balm to relax and promote sleep! They taste good together too!

Lemon Verbena Lady said...

Passion flower and lemon balm together sound lovely, Barbara! Thanks for the suggestion. xxoo LVL