Herbal Teas taste great and can often be used to treat minor maladies or improve your mood. What’s really neat, is that many of the common ingredients in herbal teas are easy to grow in containers, which means you can have fresher than fresh herbs on hand when you’d like to make a cup or two to sooth a tummy ache or treat the symptoms of a cold, or to help you relax before bedtime.
Making an herbal tea is pretty easy. All you need is the herbs, a teapot and a tea ball infuser (see the photo above, you can find them at coffee & tea shops or you can buy one online). You could get a teapot with a special infuser compartment, but it’s not required. Simply put the herbs in the infuser, put the infuser in the tea pot, pour hot water into the teapot, and let the herbs steep for a few minutes.
There are tons of herbal tea recipes on the internet, but this Apple-Chamomile Tea recipe is a good one to get started with because it only has a few, easy to acquire ingredients and who couldn’t use a mug full of relaxing chamomile?
These herbs can all be grown in containers and used for herbal tea infusions:
Flowers
Alliums (flowers and young shoots), bee balm, carnations, hibiscus blossoms, hollyhock, honeysuckle flowers (the berries are highly poisonous), Johnny-jump-ups (flowers and leaves), lavender (blossoms and leaves), nasturtiums (flowers, buds, leaves, seedpods), pansies (flowers and leaves), roses (petals, leaves, and rose hips), violets (flowers and leaves)
Kitchen herbs
Basil, chamomile flowers, chives, dill, lemon balm, marjoram, oregano, parsley, peppermint and other mints, rosemary, sage, thyme, verbena.
Bushes and trees
Citrus blossoms, gardenia, hibiscus flowers, honeysuckle flowers, scented geraniums.
“Weeds”
Chicory (flowers and buds), goldenrod, good King Henry, lamb’s quarters, purslane.
