How To Craft Your Very Own Tea Garden Right In Your Kitchen

A good cup of tea can make all your troubles fade away — at least for a little while. For many of us, being able to make one in a pinch is a necessity, and what better way than having a ready supply growing in your kitchen window? There's something very homey and comforting about having a container herb garden in your kitchen. It looks nice, smells wonderful, and it is incredibly useful. It also provides a steady source of fresh herbs (as long as you don't make rookie mistakes!) that you can not only use for cooking but for making fresh tea whenever you want it.

Growing your own kitchen tea garden is surprisingly simple to do and makes for a fun and satisfying hobby. It gives you total control over what your tea tastes like because you get to handpick the type of herbs you grow. Start with choosing your herbs, select some containers with good drainage (you can even recycle old yogurt containers if you are on a budget, or grab some cute tin can planters for this Trader Joe's trend).

Put your plants in a spot that gets good light, and check them each morning to make sure they are getting enough water by gently feeling the top layer of the soil. If it feels dry, give your plants some water. If it is still wet, leave well enough alone and let the plants absorb the excess water so they don't stay too wet for too long, which can lead to fungus ruining your herbs.

Part of the fun of growing your own tea garden is handpicking what flavors you'll be drinking. Some popular choices include lemon balm, mint, and chamomile. Basil is another herb that grows well on a bright, warm windowsill (even more so than outdoors, if you live in a cool climate). Not only are these herbs great flavors for brewing, but they are also all easy to grow indoors in containers. 

If you're a fan of lavender in your tea, don't be intimidated by sprawling fields of lavender that make it look like an outside-only plant. Lavender can definitely be grown indoors, but your best bet is to stick to certain varieties, like French lavender or fernleaf lavender. Make sure it gets plenty of sun, and give it a good pruning in the spring and fall.

Making your own tea from your garden is easier than you might think — you can even make it from whole cloves. When it comes to harvesting the herbs from your garden, simply trim the leaves as you need them — it will actually help promote new growth — and you can either dry the herbs out for later or brew them fresh. If you use the herbs while they're fresh, you can brew a hot cup of tea whenever you are in the mood, but if you dry them out for later, you'll get a stronger flavor as a reward for your tea garden-growing efforts.