Dividing Perennial Tea Herbs in Spring and Fall

An efficiently maintained tea garden offers both financial savings and premium beverages. Plants such as chives provide long harvests of mildly oniony stems and flowers, while Tansy and Sweet Cicely boast distinct licorice aromas.

Perennial herbs benefit from being divided periodically to maintain and expand your patch. Each herb requires different care, but in general you’ll remove aboveground growth while manipulating roots with either your hands or clippers to revitalize them and make more space available in your patch.

Chives

Perennial herbs such as chives (Allium schoenoprasum) and garlic chives (Allium schoenoprasum), which thrive in full sun to partial shade with rich, lightly moist soil are easy to grow perennial herbs that make delicious additions to herb butter or omelette dishes. Hardy in zones 4-9.

Lovage and mint are perennials that thrive in warmer climates; however, home gardeners typically treat them like annuals due to their easy propagation from seed or cuttings. Both require full sunlight with well-draining soil rich in organic matter for maximum success.

If the winter in your garden is harsh, lovage and mint plants can be protected with mulch; alternatively they’re easily brought indoors to overwinter in containers – an option which also makes for easy harvesting for tea!

Rosemary

Herbs that can be harvested fresh for use in herbal tea include rosemary and thyme. Rosemary is a woody perennial with pine-needle-like leaves, popular for both sweet and savory recipes as well as herbal infusions. Both fresh and dried rosemary possess strong flavors when added directly into recipes (or herbal tea) without being chopped up beforehand.

If you grow rosemary in your garden, mulch it to speed regrowth after winter and reduce weeds. Mulching can also extend its life by protecting against winter frost damage; as with all herbs, rosemary thrives best when exposed to full sunlight and well-draining soil; once allowed to go to seed it will continue spreading year after year reseeding itself with new seeds!

Thyme

Thyme (Thymus spp., Zones 5-9) is an herb often used in kitchens for seasoning soups, stews, meat dishes and vegetables. Additionally, its aromatic leaves make for an effective cold and cough remedy, either steeped as tea or used as gargle.

Slip the fragrant, low-growing thymes of ‘Silver Posie’ and other lemon-flavoring varieties into mixed containers or use them to accent sunny rock walls or garden beds. Ornamental varieties with variegated leaves such as ‘Gold Edge’ provide unexpected color to the landscape.

Choose a variety that best meets the growing conditions in your region and climate, taking into account how it will look in your garden or container, its size and vigor at maturity as well as any pruning or harvesting requirements – many herbs require frequent harvesting for optimal growth so ensure you can meet this demand!

Mint

A tea garden should be both attractive and relaxing to look at, yet practical for use. Consider adding trellises and fences, brick, stone or wooden plank pathways as borders for the garden, decorative tea accoutrements such as old-fashioned tins of tea or mismatched cups and saucers as attractive finishing touches for added charm.

As with vegetable gardening (see Between the Rows), herbs require similar care when it comes to gardening; this includes testing drainage and fertilization regularly, pruning, thinning and shaping as you work, mulching mint containers over wintering hardier herbs, storing seeds for next year’s planting in cool, dark locations, pruning as needed and weeding as necessary.

Lemon Verbena

Lippia triphylla, lemon verbena and Aloysia citriodora are some of the many names for this plant, which boasts one of the strongest fragrances and flavors among lemony herbs. You can use it both fresh or dried.

Herbal tea made from its leaves and flowers can help to promote relaxation and sleep quality, according to research.

Lemon verbena is a half hardy perennial shrub, shedding its leaves each winter but easily protected with mulch and frost blankets in cold areas. For optimal growth, place this plant in full sun with shelter nearby.

Lemon verbena can be harvested anytime for drying purposes, as its leaves dry quickly. To achieve maximum effectiveness when harvesting for drying lemon verbena leaves, lay them flat or hang in small bunches in an area with good air circulation before harvesting for drying.