Home grown chamomile tea

A miracle has happened in our garden. I know, another one! A chamomile plant self seeded in the veggie patch. I've been wanting to get one for a few years now but just never got round to it, so now ones got me. I asked google and facebook who have both confirmed that it is indeed a chamomile plant - probably a Roman Chamomile. It must have self seeded from my tea going into the compost.
  

It has cute little daisy flowers on a small shrub about a foot tall. If it is indeed a Roman it should be perennial, I'll take a few cuttings and see.

So to make tea, all you need to do is pick and dry the flowers (not the leaves or stalks). It's easiest to kind of rake them off the plant between your fingers. Do this when it's sunny and the flowers are dry. Ideally they should be at their peak, but if they are a little old, that's okay too. There are few things more satisfying in life than sitting in your own garden, picking your own tea.

I then dried them on paper towel under a net cover to keep off bugs and dust. (Not sure why I used paper towel, surely a clean cloth would work just as well).

Its taken a few weeks for them to dry and they look and taste amazing. The flavour is a lot stronger than the tea I buy in bulk but I think that must just be because it's so fresh.

The plant itself is wonderfully productive for such a little thing. I collect about enough to cover the large cake holder in the picture and I've harvested it four times and I suspect there will be much more to come! 

In the evening after Quin is in bed and the dishes are done we often share a little pot of chamomile tea together as our wind down ritual. It's something to chat over and relax with. And now this lovely little section of our day has just got better with the satisfaction of zero food mile, home grown tea!