TeaChat

Does anyone here grow their own herbs to make tisanes? I'd love to know what you grow, how you dry it, and how you steep it.

All the flavors of peppermint/spearmint are very easy to grow (they take over actually) and dry. The chamomile that I grow is not near as good as adagios but I have german chamomile and I just noticed over the weekend they have egyptian so I bet that is the difference. With the mints just grow, before they flower pick and let dry- put in container- very easy.

As far as drying the leaves goes, I take my method straight from the one that Alton Brown gave on Good Eats for drying beef jerky:

(3) air filters (the white, fabric ones that go in your walls; NOT the blue fiberglass ones!)
(1) large box fan
(2) elastic strapping hooks (or whatever)

Stack the filters with the leaves inside the grooves (you'll get N-1 total layers of leaves, N being the number of filters you use), and tie to the output side of the box fan with the straps (or whatever). Let it run in the house somewhere you want to smell REALLY good for a few hours. Store.

You may need to lean the fan against something to keep it balanced; just make sure you aren't blocking the intake! I'm generally able to reuse the filters about a dozen times before the threads start coming loose.