Tea – Sustainable Life Birmingham

Primrose Tea

Primrose! The lovely little five petal delicate flower we love to have in our gardens – is totally edible! Both leaves and flowers can be eaten, but Primrose tea is made from the leaves.

You can use the leaves fresh or dry them out and store them for future use.

Fill a tea strainer with leaves, and then let it steep in hot water for a few minutes. The water will turn a pale green colour. This tea tastes liek an everyday geenric herb tea – it doesn’t have any kind of real flavour to it. I added the primrose flowers to the top of my glass to liven it up a bit and improve the flavour and content. This means you get a wonderful nose full of the smell of flowers everytime you take a sip too, which is highly relaxing!

In the early days of medicine, the Primrosewas considered an important remedy in muscular rheumatism, paralysis and gout. The herb has sedative propoerties.
Not to be mistaken for other similar varieties and cross cultivators (evening primrose – also made into teas and tinctures, cowslip, oxlip).

How to Make Camomile Tea

Ingredients

Camomile Flowers

Method

Pick the flowers whole and leaves to soak in cold water. Change the water to ensure no soil or bugs remain. Leave to soak for a couple of hours and then dry out using a dehydrater or oven on a low setting.

Pack into a clean dry container such as a glass jar. Your camomile is now preserved!

To brew the tea simply add a few flower heads into your cup of boiled water and leave to stew for a few minutes.

Goose Grass Tea

If you have picked up some goosegrass this spring for eating, save a little to one side for some goosegrass tea.

DIABETICS SHOULD AVOID THIS RECIPE.

Making the tea is very simple! Just dry out the goosegrass at around 50 degrees in your oven or dehydrator. Then collect in an air tight dry and sterile pot.

To brew the tea, simply add a little to your strainer or pot and allow to steep for ten minutes.

This tea makes a great herbal remedy for constipation as it’s a mild laxative.

Goosegrass

It’s spring! and One of the first things to come up this spring that you may not be aware of as being edible is – Goosegrass! You may know it by many names including sticky weed, it’s distinctive due to it’s sticky nature and most people know it from their childhood days of sticking it onto the backs of unknowing parents and siblings.

It’s been a while since our last post, and we haven’t been idle but winter is a hard season. Next year we will be able to tell you more about the various wine, cider and food stuffs we have been collecting in more detail.

Name: Goose Grass, Sticky Weed.

Location: Anywhere, usually poorly drained and compacted soil.

Months: March, April

Edible Parts: Leaves, Seeds

Non-Edible Parts: Burrs

Caution: Diabetics should avoid Goose Grass Teas.

As one of the first edible plants to pop up at the start of the spring season, Goosegrass is a handy herb to know how to use as a part of your diet. Best picked in March in full sunshine, you can take advantage of the young fresh leaves. The leaves can be used like a salad leaf or replacing basil in a pesto. If you use the leaves to make a tisane (Tea) it becomes a powerful diuretic and a mild laxative. The seeds can be used as a coffee substitute although in our humble opinion Dandelion roots make a much more substantial and tasty coffee flavour.
Even the root of this plant is useful as a red dye agent.