Tips for Harvesting Chamomile for Homemade Tea

I think it was two years ago now that I planted chamomile in pots which eventually made their way onto my back patio. Chamomile is part of the daisy family, a fact which is evident from the slender white petals stretching out from knobby yellow buds…And this herb is sooooo deliciously fragrant! Typically, chamomile is an annual—meaning it only blooms once and then dies—but this flowery herb is a prolific self seeder, and so it comes back for me every year just like a perennial. There are two main types of chamomile—German chamomile, which grows tall with small flowers, and the Roman variety, which grows shorter with slightly larger blooms. Either type of chamomile will bloom through the whole warm season, which in these parts is from mid-spring to early fall.

But first, a few tips on how to harvest and store chamomile might be useful, and at the end I’ll discuss my attempts at making that homemade herbal tea…

Generally speaking, I harvest throughout the summer, picking the blooms as they come and/or as needed. You do not harvest all the flowers at once, but instead harvest frequently by snipping off only the flower bud itself and only the flowers whose petals are fully open and not droopy. As with all herbs, harvest in the morning to lessen the stress on the plant and to get a yield with the best flavor.

Chamomile can be used fresh, but, in my experience, the flavor seems better when it is left to dry out first. Dried chamomile can become the seeds for the next year’s crop (in case your plant does not self seed) or can be used in a variety of amazing recipes. There are a couple ways you can dry out the flowers. One way is to spread the flowers on a baking sheet and put them in the oven on a very low temperature (no more than 250˚) for a few minutes. Another way is to lay the buds out on a tray and leave in a dark dry place for one to two weeks. Some people splurge and buy a dehydrator—which can be purchased for as little as $70—to speed up the drying process. After the chamomile is thoroughly dried out, it is ready to be stored in a glass container. Just make sure there is no moisture left before sealing in a container, otherwise mold can develop, and we don’t want that!

So for my first few attempts at making this herbal tea, I rinsed the flowers off, then spread them out to dry for a little less than an hour before steeping in boiling water. To separate out the heavy particles, I used a coffee filter with a small sieve and that seemed to work well. One of the things I did notice—which I was not thrilled with—was that the tea seemed bitter. On subsequent attempts I made sure to leave out any stems and leaves, and I also lessened the amount of time I let the brew steep (from around ten minutes to more like 5 minutes) and that seemed to help reduce the bitterness.

Once I get my recipe down pat, I will share as a separate blog post, so stay tuned!