Tea is a good way to add healthy nutrients to your diet while staying hydrated. Even if you are a coffee drinker, tea is always nice to switch to on occasion, with a bit of caffeine to boot. While you’re in the garden-planning stage, consider adding a few plants to make your own tea.

You don’t need to grow your tea herbs separately, and I’ll tell you some easy ones to start with so you don’t have to spend so long caring for them. I’ll go into detail about oxidation later, but that’s basically how black the tea is. With many of these herbs, the most oxidation they’ll get is from drying them.

Mint Plants

There are so many kinds of mint that you can grow; peppermint, apple mint, chocolate mint, pineapple mint or spearmint. The entire family of them grows well without any special care and the only thing you need to make sure of is that they’re watered enough. Other than that, it’ll be a problem if they spread into the ground so it’s better to keep them in pots so they stay enclosed.

Mint teas have general benefits like improving digestion, reduced heartburn, and flatulence, and if you take it with some honey, you can relieve a cough. Mint leaves don’t need to be dried to make tea so you can just add mature leaves and their soft stems to a pot and prepare your tea.

Lemon Balm

This tea herb looks somewhat similar to mint but it delivers a lemony flavor and scent that’s hard to miss. Grow this herb in pots so that it doesn’t spread too far and take over your garden, literally. Prune it regularly before it releases seeds so you can control growth. Make sure you don’t fertilize it since it already grows quite rapidly and doing so can be risky for other plants.

It’s praised and heralded for its calming properties, earning it the title of an antidepressant from nature. It has a soothing effect on your nervous system that relieves anxiety as well. Since they contain menthol as well, you’ll be getting some beneficial properties of mint as well. You can use fresh leaves, or dry them as well.

Chamomile

While the flower-bearing plant seems very popular, Roman and German varieties are used to make teas. The annual plant, German chamomile, can be sowed in spring before planting them in a shaded spot. Once the plant establishes itself in your garden, it thrives with minimal maintenance, producing the most flavorsome herb in dry conditions.

The tea is beneficial for various conditions but it’s most well known for helping one sleep. It also aids in the treatment of ulcers, menstrual cramps, and respiratory tract inflammation. The sunny yellow middle of flowers is the main ingredient for the tea but you will need many flowers to prepare tea if they aren’t dried. On the other hand, a spoon of dried flowers can produce more tea.

These are some of the easiest teas you can grow in your garden to enjoy healing teas regularly, straight from your own garden. Happy Farming!

More on growing teas: Grow Your Own Tea at Home