Growing Your Own Tea Garden: The Guide to Growing and Harvesting Flavorful Teas in Your Backyard (CompanionHouse Books) Create Tea Blends to Manage Stress, Boost Immunity, Soothe Headaches, and More

You love to drink tea. Why not grow your own?

• Explore 60+ diverse plants that make great tea, including the classic tea plant and dozens of flavorful leaves, flowers, fruits, and roots
• 9 fun garden designs, including immunity-boosting, headache-soothing, relaxation-inducing, and hangover-curing
• Best cultivation practices and how to plant, maintain, harvest, and enjoy a productive backyard tea garden
• Recipes for teas to make from your new garden, such as Calendula Sun Tea, Refreshing Hibiscus Tea, and Sleepytime Tea
• Tea 101, from learning the differences between green tea and white tea to how to properly dry and store your bounty

If you've ever considered raising your own tea, this comprehensive guide is the place to start!

Growing Your Own Tea Garden is packed with inspiration and practical instructions for cultivating and enjoying delicious teas from a variety of plants in your own personal tea garden. You don't have to be an avid gardener: Author Jodi Helmer, a food and farming journalist, provides all the information you need to plan and plant a healthy, bountiful backyard tea garden, with nine suggested garden designs and useful cultivation advice. She shows you how to choose the right crops for your soil and climate, starting with the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) and going on through a survey of tisanes (aka herbal teas). Explore a directory of over 60 ingredients, including medicinal herbs like milk thistle, chickweed, rugosa rose, burdock, and more, with notes on their active properties and purported health benefits.

Discover how to grow the full range of plants that make wonderful teas and herbal infusions, from flowering chamomile and lavender to chicory roots, rose hips, lemon verbena, peppermint, aromatic bergamot, and more! Jodi shows you how to harvest, dry, and store your tea to enjoy all year long, along with brewing tips and creative recipes specially formulated to provide natural remedies for headaches, upset stomach, and stress.

An included plant index shows you how to grow dozens of crops that make marvelous tea drinks, herbal infusions, and decoctions. Included are instructions for growing tea in container gardens and raised beds; understanding the differences between black tea, green tea, white tea, and herbal tea; harvesting, drying, and storing your seasonal leaves for consumption on cool autumn days; and how to brew the perfect cup of tea.

You'll also find tea garden designs to help you grow a garden that works for your lifestyle and can help address common ailments, offer immune support, provide a natural and nourishing health boost, and support stress management. Do you suffer from tension headaches? Try growing the Headache Tea Garden with its vibrant tufted violet and trumpet honeysuckle. Do you enjoy a good party? Try the Hangover Cure Tea Garden! Are you stressed out and having trouble unwinding or falling asleep? Try the caffeine-free Relaxing Tea Garden or the Sleepytime Tea Garden. If you're feeling tired, sluggish, or just need a burst of energy to fight that afternoon slump, skip the coffee: the Fatigue-Fighting Tea Garden will put some pep in your step! There are designs for an Immune-Boosting Tea Garden, Tummy Troubles Tea Garden, and more!

Don't buy store-bought blends when homegrown is so much better! You'll find everything you need to know to start growing, blending, and brewing your own high-quality tea inside Growing Your Own Tea Garden!

"Never settle for store-bought, premade blends again! With beautiful images and detailed instructions for growing, drying, and brewing, passionate tea drinkers at every level of gardening experience will love this book." — Allison M. Sidhu, Managing Editor, Gardener's Path

Jodi Helmer is an experienced journalist who writes about food, gardening, farming, the environment, and sustainable living. Jodi's work has appeared in Entrepreneur, Hemispheres, Civil Eats, National Geographic Traveler, AARP, Farm Life, WebMD, Health, CNNMoney, and Guardian Sustainable Business. She is the author of five books, including The Green Year and Farm Fresh Georgia. When she's not writing, she grows vegetables and raises bees.