How Make Your Own Herbal Tea BlendsMaking your own herbal tea blends is easy, all you need is a ready supply of herbs to dry, somewhere to dry them, some clean air tight jars, and a will to experiment. You might like to use scales to weigh each quantity of herb, make a note of each for future reference. Use plants which have beautiful fragrances as well as medicinal properties, or mix blander tasting and smelling herbs with more fragrant ones to make them more palatable. Obviously make sure that you have identified the plant properly, and check out any side effects or warnings about that plant first. Some good tea herbs with warnings are listed in our plant remedies guide. Dry The HerbsI use dried herbs in my tea blends because it allows me to make up a large batch of each tea. These dried leaves and flowers can last up to a year in an air tight jar. I dry my herbs by hanging them in bunches in the same cupboard as my boiler. More about drying herbs here... Smell The herbsHave a good sniff of each of the dried herbs, start to think about smells and medicinal benefits, that would compliment each other, then start to mix some of these herbs together. I use a large mixing bowl, and mix the herbs with my hands. Keep sniffing at the blended herbs, the way they are smelling together is a good indication on how your tea will taste when brewed. You can make this a purely herbal tea, or you can mix it with a good quality loose tea. I would recommend a green tea, Darjeeling, or a ceylon tea. Make a note of each lot of herbs and measurements as you go along. You might like to taste test a few of the mixtures as you go along too. Make a small taster cup with half a teaspoon of herb and boiling water. Make another with the same herbs and a little bit of honey so that you can see how it tastes sweetened and unsweetened. The Perfect BlendWhen you have found your perfect blend add it to an air tight jar and label it. This will keep for a year. Some Of My Blends...Pot Pourri Summer TeaOne of the favorite herbal tea blends that I make is my Summer Pot Pourri Tea. This one smells absolutely gorgeous and could actually be used as a pot pourri too. The pot marigold flowers give the tea a honey-like fragrance and sweetness, that is evocative of a summers evening in the flower garden. I like to add a bit of honey when I serve this tea, or failing that brown sugar. To make this tea I dry equal parts of each herb and mix. I make a batch and keep in an air tight jar.
Mint Mix Herbal TeaI make regular peppermint tea all the time, but do enjoy to mix things up a bit. This mint mix tea is a refreshing and calming blend. It has a nice minty flavour. When I make this tea I use half peppermint types of mint and half spearmint types of mint.
Refreshing Citrus TeaLots of citrusy flavours and scents. This is one of my favorite teas for hot summers days. I add a bit of honey when I make my tea because I enjoy it a bit sweeter. Sometimes when I have a cold I have this tea with some added fresh ginger slices.
Meadow TeaA subtly sweet, healthy, herbal tea blend. This one is great for if you are feeling run down.
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Join The Minty Fun!In fact I am now overrun with yummy mint. I just put all of my plants outside and they are flourishing. - Everything in the garden is rosy ~ or minty! So what to do with all this fresh mint? 5 Things To Do With Mint... (soon to be 10!)1. Use Mint In Pretty Planter Displays Or Flower Arrangements
Mint sprigs make for great foliage in a boquet or flower arrangement, they are a bit different as a choice of greenery but have the added benefit of smelling heavenly, I often use spearmint in my displays, the bright, fresh green contrasts so well with brightly colored flowers. 2. Make A Delicious Mint SyrupIt is easy to make a yummy mint syrup, this can be added to cocktails, lemonade, and other beverages. All you need is some fresh mint, sugar, and water. How to make mint syrup...3. Make Fresh Mint TeaMint teas are really refreshing and good for the digestion. They can be made from any mint (except pennyroyal, which can be toxic) I drink a lot of mint tea, peppermint makes me feel calm and cool, and also helps me sleep. I drink spearmint tea if I am having a bad stomach or trapped wind, (though all mints help with digestion). I find spearmint sweeter in taste than peppermint, but enjoy both in teas. Hell, sometimes I even mix them! You can add sugar, agave nectar, or honey, to your personal taste. I take mine straight but my partner takes his with honey. Find out about the medicinal properties of mint here4. Put It In The Bath!I love taking herbal baths, mint has to be one of my favorites. The mint aromas are quite invigorating, whilst also being sweet and calming, hmmm, mint is such an enigma! To make a mint herbal bath you simply throw a bunch of fresh mint leaves into the bath while it's running. Rip or bruise the mint leaves before you toss them in, to release the oils. Mint stems and flowers can be included in the bath. Make sure to rinse them first though, as an earwig or aphids floating around in the bath with you sure ruins the ambience. Speaking of insects, I use the mint leaves that have been nibbled at in my baths. I save the perfect ones for eating or preparing drinks etc. 5. Make Crystallized / Candied Mint LeavesCrystallized mint leaves are easy to make and look amazing. They can be used to garnish deserts, ice cream, cakes, and also dipped or drizzled with chocolate! You will need egg whites and sugar to make these little treats. How to make candied mint leaves...Some Of My Different Mint PlantsThere are literally hundreds of types of mint plant, with a cacophony of beautiful smells. Here are some of the mint plants that I grow.
I have a feeling that they like the cramped conditions of a mixed container. This is because the area in my medic garden that I planted with a mixture of plants is thriving, where as the single pot areas in the stacker are not doing as well.
I have planted up another mixed medic garden, to test my theory, and will compare plant growth during the growing season. My medic garden is beginning to thrive again, I think the brighter sunlight has really kick-started the plants and they are getting lovely and bushy. I sowed some more seedlings last week and they are already getting their 2nd set of leaves! I obviously started my January seeds way to early, as some of these have only just got their 2nd set of leaves. I knew it was a bit early, but the warm weather made me think that it was OK to do a January sow, next year I will do it in May. I have gained another mint plant, a spearmint, and two more lemon balm cuttings, these are outside in a planter with other herbs. - I am planting up two gardens now, one indoors and one outdoors, the indoor growing can be tricky with sudden plant deaths, so for this reason I am also planting the same herbs and medicinal plants outside, It's thundering tonight, with a lot of lightning flashes across the sky. I am really happy that my plants will be getting a good dose of Nitrates in the soil from the rain. I had thought about putting my indoor medic garden outside for the duration of the thunder storm, but decided against this as some of the plants are not ready to get bashed about by the huge rain drops that often fall during a thunder storm. Instead I have placed a container outside to collect the rainwater that's falling during the thunder storm. I will use this to water my indoor plants with. How do Plants Benefit From Lightning?Lightning releases gasses into the air, one of which is nitrogen, the nitrogen bonds with oxygen particles in the atmosphere, and falls to the ground with the rain. Nitrogen is a very important for plants, it encourages healthy root and plant growth, and encourages the plant to produce chlorophyll. If you have any plants that are not looking healthy, have yellowing leaves, and stunted growth, then your plants may well have a nitrogen deficiency. It does not lightning much around here though, so what about those times when you cannot use the nitrogen rich rainwater? Easy DIY Organic Nitrogen FertilizersThere are two really simple ways to add nitrogen to the soil that are pleasant enough to use in my indoor containers...(ie, not smelly or gross!)
One is to use coffee grounds sprinkled on the soil, or mixed in the top layer of soil. I don't do this often, just every few months or every quarter. Or if the plants are looking sad and like they need a boost. Another way is to use a comfrey infusion, or tea. Make this with fresh or dried comfrey leaves, tear them up and place in a pan with boiling water. Leave to infuse and cool, then decant into bottles for watering the plants with. You can make this without boiling the leaves, just leave to infuse for a few weeks in a bucket - but this does smell! Comfrey is an awesome plant that has a lot of medicinal uses, which I will be covering on the main website soon. It is even said that growing comfrey with other plants will help them retain nitrogen in the soil. In my last post I talked about taking a load of slugs and snails away from my medicinal garden, and releasing them far from my house.
I thought that the slimers I removed would soon be replaced by new ones, eager to eat all my herbs, but so far I have not seen any snails and only 1 slug! I am looking every night and they have not returned :) Tonight it is raining, this must help the slugs and snails propel themselves across the ground quicker. I have a feeling I may have some visitors tonight, and will do the same as before. Collect them up and place them far away from my plants! The night before last I popped out to my medic garden to see how many snails were around. I had noticed more and more plants vanishing, and the plants that were still around had big slimy trails all over them. It kinda put me right off the mint, seeing it with snot all over the leaves.
Anyhoo' I popped out at about 11.30pm and the place was crawling in slugs and snails! My herb garden is surrounded by concrete, so I was quite surprised to see so many of the little shits! I began gathering them up into a jar, but had to go and get a bucket, as clearly all the slugs and snails were not going to fit in the jar. Off of 6 containers outside I picked up 14 snails, and 11 slugs!!!! I tossed some salad into the bucket with the slugs and snails, and placed a cover over the top. Next day I took the dog for a walk and took my bucket of snails with the plan to release them in thick undergrowth away from my home. I took them across 3 roads and tipped he bucket into a nice patch of weeds and nettles. Only thing was all the slugs and snails were all still attached to the bucket and I had to pick each one out one-by-one and put them in the nettles. By this time the bucket was full of this watery slime and although I actually find snails cute, I was really wanting to heave! I was also getting a lot of strange looks, as I had decided to release the snails during the peak time for people walking their kids to school! Last night I expected to find the same huge numbers of slugs and snails, and had my bucket all ready... I had also heard horror stories of people marking snails with nail varnish before they have released them into the wild, only to find the majority of marked snails back in their garden within days. Wouldn't it be funny if a few people in that area had marked snails with nail varnish, and the snails they thought had returned were actually someone elses marked snails! I think if I try the marking experiment I will place a big C on them, then I'll know they are mine. The next time they return I will paint their shells so brightly and so temptingly for birds.... That way I won't have to deal with them At the moment I have 5 different types of mint growing in my medic garden. Mint is useful for all kinds of things and a few leaves eaten raw can really help with indigestion.
Mint seems to do really well indoors, at least where I have it, in a north facing window, that gets reflected sun. I have the plants in wall hanging planters, in the kitchen, and in a stacking planter with other herbs, the mint plants like to trail when planted like this, and look pretty dangling down. I like to use mint on cooking too, and enjoy a glass of mint tea on a hot summers day. Check out my peppermint remedy page for more info on the benefits of mint. and a recipe for a simple mint tea. I have; Wild mint, which I think is apple-mint Garden mint Eau de Cologne Mint (a very strong peppermint) Peppermint (a beautiful perfect peppermint) Mild peppermint (this one is like a cross between a garden mint and a peppermint) Some of these mints are probably sub species, or crosses, like the mild peppermint one, and maybe the wild mint. I know that mints like to cross-pollinate, so I remove the mint flowers before they get a chance. It might be interesting to try and breed a new mint though...I wonder if mint will cross pollinate with other members of the mint family, like ground ivy, or dead nettle - I doubt it., but it would be cool to have minty deadnettle plants. The next mint plant I want is a spearmint, these like a lot of root space so that one will probably be going outside. I have been wanting to make some simple plant markers for a while now, the ones I had made previously (from canvas stretchers, that I had left over) have rotted into the soil and are no longer readable.
Tonight I went through all of my plant pots and pulled out all of the wooden canvas stretchers. I decided to utilise some of my recent beach combing and river walking finds, and make some more markers. These ones will last much longer than the wooden ones, and were so simple to make. Just write the plant name on to the stone, river glass, or pottery shard, with a sharpie. |
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Blog ArchivesTea Of The MonthThis beautiful Earl Grey from Bigelow is the tea of the month for July.
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