If you're a big tea drinker, you probably stock up on it every chance you get. But wouldn't it be nice to enjoy your favorite cozy beverage without ever having to spend money on tea again?
Enter Amy Chapman's (@inthecottagegarden) gardening hack, which shows you how to grow an infinite supply of chamomile so you can have tea for days.
The scoop
To grow your own chamomile plants, you'll just need a small gardening tray or pot filled with compost. After watering it, rip open a tea bag and sprinkle it generously across the top of the compost.
"Chamomile tea is made from the flowers of the plant, which means any tea bags you buy will contain some seeds too," Amy says in the Instagram video. She adds that you may find other parts of the plant, such as the petals, in the tea bags as well.
Next, add another layer of compost and place your seeded plants in a sunny place inside your house, making sure to keep the plants watered. Amy says that you should have tiny chamomile plants in a few weeks, which you can then transplant to your garden.
"Soon, you'll be able to harvest your own homegrown chamomile for tea. I like to hang the flowers up to dry so I have an endless supply of chamomile to drink throughout the year. Don't forget to set a few seeds aside for next year so you never have to buy chamomile tea ever again," she says.
How it's helping
This gardening hack offers plenty of benefits for both your pocketbook and the Earth. For one, growing your own food, whether it's tea, fruits, or vegetables, can help reduce your grocery bill and save you time at the store each week. Since you can potentially grow enough chamomile for a year's worth of tea, the savings can really add up.
Growing food in a backyard garden can also positively impact the planet since it curbs demand for store-bought, mass-produced fruits, vegetables, and teas that travel hundreds or thousands of miles before they make it to store shelves.
This process uses enormous amounts of water, energy, and other vital resources, in addition to the planet-warming dirty fuels required to transport produce.
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Finally, growing your own chamomile keeps plastic waste and other packaging on tea out of landfills. As many as 35 million tea bags are thrown away in the UK alone each year, per Nio Teas, most of which likely end up in landfills and produce harmful methane pollution as they decompose.
If you grow your own chamomile, you can compost the leaves when you're done with the tea, another win for the environment.
What everyone's saying
Instagrammers were thrilled about the hack and felt inspired to try it.
"What a tea-rrific tip!" someone said.
"This is my dream," another added, saying they'd planted some and had sprouts growing.
"I can't believe I never thought of this!" another commented.
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