As you can see I have used three 12″ containers to plant individual herbs of basil, lemon balm and lemon thyme. I started with 4″ plant starts easily found in your local garden nursery. Please purchase organic herb starts if they are available. This tea is called Focus and is found in my ebook Queen D’s Fairy Recipes and Magical Potions Book, available on Amazon.com. You can harvest the herbs before they flower for the most robust flavor. The tea can be made with fresh leaves or dried leaves. When I collect them I wash them thoroughly and allowing them to dry using a white cotton tea towel after the washing and separate out any debris or dead or funky leaves. Next I strip the leaves from the stems and allow the three herbs to dry together as a blend in a flat basket or if I want to speed up the process, I use my dehydrator sheets placing the open mesh sheet on the top of the herbs (so they don’t blow around the inside of the dehydrator, and a solid sheet on the bottom of each tray.
After the herbs are completely dry to the touch…
I take and place them in my blender using a small blender cup and grind them into small cut pieces for tea. You can store your teas in mason jars, or bag them individually with fold over tea bags that you fill with about 1 tsp of tea. This tea is especially helpful with completing tasks from start to finish with ease. There is no caffeine so you can rest at night after working on your special projects. ,
The herb teas are best consumed within the first two years of your harvesting them.You can start the herbs like basil from seed, and the lemon balm is easily started from a root cutting. The lemon thyme however is best purchased as a plant start, or by using a horticultural propagation technique called layering, where you pin a one or two year old branch to the ground and let roots develop from the branch under the soil. In my opinion it’s easier to purchase a plant start if available. Happy tea making!!