#grow tea

[graciousgardening-blog]

[teaquestblog-blog]

Growing My Own Tea

My husband bought me a tea plant (camellia sinensis) and two mint plants (pineapple mint and spearmint) for Valentine's Day.

After looking online to figure out how to care for each plant, I went out and bought some potting materials.  I don't have a garden as I live in a condo, so I had to purchase a pot large enough to allow the tea plant to grow into.  Apparently tea plants will grow to about 5 feet tall and above unless you trim it to keep it from growing taller.  I also bought a window box for the mint with enough space so that they can grow outward, giving me more leaves to work with.  Mint is an invasive plant, meaning that unless it is contained in a pot, it will grow anywhere it can, much like a weed.  It's definitely not a plant you want to grow in the ground if you are working with an outdoor garden.

There are types of soil out there that have chemicals, pesticides, etc in them that are not good for growing consumable plants.  I didn't want to take my chances, so I bought a few bags of Supersoil, which came highly recommended by other more experienced gardeners on multiple forums.  Afterward, I went home and potted the plants.

(Above: Tea/camellia sinensis; Below: Left - Pineapple Mint, Right - Spearmint)

After potting them, I watered them enough to moisten the soil well.  Mint apparently needs a lot of water, so they need to be watered 1-2 times a day, keeping the soil moist at all times.

All three plants grow well in zone 8 and above, lucky for me, since I'm in the Phoenix area.  They all need direct sunlight or partial shade.

I also found that you should not begin taking leaves from your tea plant until it is 3 years old.  Unfortunately this means I have a long way to go before I can start making my own tea.  I'll have to stick with home-grown herbals until then.