The trick to making your own teas is in the mixing of types:
Healthy greens - leaves of raspberries, thyme, sage, honeysuckle, or strawberries are flavor full and add depth to tea. This group has the highest vitamins including iron and often the strongest flavors. Many of these leaves can be dried for winter use. Strawberry is usually growing in spring but you can save dried leaves just for this time of year.
Beautiful blooms - bee balm, pansies, nasturtiums (peppery), roses including hips (high in vitamin C), and violets all work and add color. This is nice but winter flowers are hard to find except maybe rosemary that often flowers in winter. Flowers can be dried for early spring use or some can be grown indoors.
Noble fragrances - chives (leaves rise up in snow), rosemary, marjoram, verbena, oregano, geranium and lilac. In fact most herbs add fragrance whether using leaves or flowers. This is why so many are found in this particular list. They also grow early when other plants are still sleeping like thyme, chives and sage. Herbs also carry the most health benefits. These are the few we use but there are many other not mentioned.
Bright tastes - zests of all kinds, such as lemon, orange, or limes all enhance teas. Mints also can lighten a tea and grows early. You can also ream citrus fruits as we discard elements once tea is seeped. It’s faster and easier than running the skins over a fine grater and tea water doesn't mind long strings of zest.
Savory taste - Vanilla bean casing. During Pesach we do not use vanilla extract (unless we make it ourselves). So were vanilla flavor is needed the beans precious seeds are extracted and used. Don’t throw away the hall but save for your flavored tea mixes.
Here is one of my favorite that uses strawberry leaves:
Summer Days Tea
Add equal amount of leaves and flowers but only a tsp of zest per cup.
Raspberry leaves
Strawberry leaves
lemon zest or orange zest
Thyme leaves with and without flowers
This mixture is nice during the cold winter days to remind me that summer will come. Both strawberry and Raspberry leaves dry easily. Thyme freezes and can be also grown indoors in winter in a pot. Pick raspberry leaves before they flower because flowering removes flavor of the leaves. Strawberries can be picked all season long if the bugs don't eat the leaves before you get to them. Gather a lot of leaves if you find you like this tea as I do. They go quickly once the season ends and sadly winter often outlasts these tea stores.
Citrus zest can be taken off fruit whenever you have citrus fruits, before pealing, zest or ream them then dry or freeze them. I keep these in small tins and withdraw what I need them per cup serving these up in my tea ball. Seep the tea for 5 minutes for a mild tea to ten for a stronger tea. Remove ball (or pour through sieve if using a pot) and enjoy.
