Brewing Tea From Your Flower Garden ~ In Oklahoma, you say?? YES!!

Brewing Tea From Your Flower Garden ~ In Oklahoma, you say?? YES!!

I am a Tea Sipper. A Tea Fanatic. I love hot tea, iced tea, lukewarm tea, any-way-you-want-to-serve-it tea...as long as it's FRESHLY BREWED. Don't give me any of that canned tea or in-the-jug tea from the grocery store of convenience store.. NAH! Nasty stuff.. please don't jump on me if you like pre-made store bought tea...we're talking fresh tea here.

My mother-in-law has a beautiful Camellia bush in the flower bed at the front of the house. It is about 10 feet tall, has beautiful waxy leaves and is an evergreen.. brightens up the yard even in the winter. When it blooms, it has gorgeous white flowers.

Recently I ran across something about Chinese tea coming from Camellia Sinensis, a different variety of camelias than my mother-in-law has, BUT looks very similar in the pictures and will grow wherever camellias grow. Some charts say it will grown as far north as zone 7.

The idea of having a bush growing in my flower beds that is pretty AND I can brew tea from the leaves or bark just greatly appeals to me. In fact, in the various articles that I found, there seems to be five different teas that are produced from this plant: White tea, green tea, oolong, pu-erh tea, and black tea; depending upon how you treat the leaves or the bark prior to brewing.

The plant is about 4% caffeine.

So meet my two new tea plants that I'm hoping will do well in Southeast Oklahoma. I have every reason to believe they will. In a couple of months, I'll order a couple more. I would like to have 4 I think. It takes a few years for them to get big enough to start harvesting from without hurting the plants.

Since I'm a Tea Sipper, I've been handed the goose that lays the golden egg!

Moving to Southeast Oklahoma... are you a tea sipper? You're in luck then! It sounds like you can grow your own tea when re-locating to McCurtain County or Choctaw County Oklahoma. Camelia Sinensis is the tea plant that is many families cash crop in other countries. I am so looking forward to the time that I can have that first cup of tea from my own tea leaves!