Growing Tea on the Homestead

This week in our Farm Fresh Tuesday Blog Hop, our featured posts are all about tea and why you should be growing tea on the homestead! We are huge tea drinkers in our family, so I was excited to see these two articles in our blog hop last week, How and Why You Should Grow A Tea Garden and 19 Uses for Calendula Tea!

Growing Tea on the Homestead

Many of us grow our own food on the homestead to be more self sufficient. There are so many benefits from drinking tea, so why not grow your own? I grow my own vegetables, so I know how they are grown and that they were grown organically. I think growing tea on the homestead for these reasons is a good idea too!

Black Tea and Green Tea both come from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis, which can be grown in zones 7-9.

Growing Herbal Teas

There are many other herbal teas that are known to have many health benefits as well. So drinking tea is a great habit to get into. Just remember not to defeat the health benefits, by loading your tea with sugar, as all that extra sugar is bad for you and will outweigh any health benefits from the tea itself.

Some common herbs or plants that make great herbal tea and are easy to grow at home include:

• Chamomile
• Lemon Balm
• Rose Hip
• Mint
• Dandelion
• Lavender
• Ginger
• Lemon Verbena
• Monarda (Bee Balm)
• Raspberry Leaf

Health Benefits of Drinking Tea

Green tea is known to be super beneficial for you, in fact, it is one of the healthiest beverages you can drink! It can increase your stamina and memory and help with fat loss and is full of antioxidants which can help fight cancers.

We have started drinking lots of homemade iced green tea this summer for these reasons. Our favorite brand for this are the Harney & Son's Green Tea Flavors. They have many other awesome Iced Tea flavors as well that are not green tea, but we have been trying to get more green tea into our diet for the health benefits.

Black tea has been proven beneficial to oral health, preventing strokes and is also full of antioxidants which are great for fighting cancers. My favorite black tea is Twinings English Breakfast tea with a teeny bit of Stevia and milk!

Due to the healthy aspects of drinking tea, it is a wise idea to be growing tea on the homestead.

Tips on Brewing Tea

If your family drinks a lot of tea, I am going to suggest you get an electric tea kettle. They are so convenient and they make a great gift too for any tea drinkers you may know! We love ours, we have this Kitchen Aid Electric Tea Kettle and I highly recommend it.  They heat up the water in about 2 minutes flat!

Just don't do what I did and put it on the stove out of habit....my first one didn't last a week! After over 30 years of brewing tea on the stove in a tea pot, I filled my brand new electric tea kettle and put it on the stove......and it melted. It was so sad. And so stinky! I had to replace it, and now I park the tea kettle station as far away from the stove as possible!

When brewing, be sure to follow the directions for each different type of tea. A good black tea needs to steep for 4-5 minutes to get the full flavor! My husband drives me nuts, and only brews for a minute or less. You can often times reuse your tea bag for a second cup, but the flavor will be not as strong.

My Featured Posts this Week in our Farm Fresh Tuesday Blog Hop are:

How and Why to Grow Your Own Tea Garden

Our first featured post is How and Why to Grow Your Own Tea Garden Right Now from OutdoorswiththeSkis.com and it is a very in depth article on how and why you should grow a tea garden. Please check it out for much more detail on actually growing a tea garden!

19 Uses for Calendula Tea

Our second featured post is 19 Uses for Calendula Tea from Susan at ItsMySustainableLife.com. This article goes into great detail on how to use this tea and how to grow it and brew it. Calendula is a beautiful flower that is in many home gardens, so why not use it for tea too?

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