Preserving Chamomile Flowers

Chamomile tea is one of my favorite warm drinks because of the flowery sweet taste.  This spring I started some chamomile plants from seed and planted them out in my herb patch  Only two of them survived but they grew very well once they got going. 

As you can see the plants have formed a nice mound which happens to be front and center in the herb patch.  The plants are positively loaded with flowers and it seems like the more flowers I pluck from the plant, the more flowers it makes to replace them.  I have been able to harvest the plant about once a week now for the last few weeks and I am preserving them by dehydrating them.

 

I usually wait until mid day to pick the flowers because that is when they are fully open.  Once I have gathered them I rinse them very well under cold water because there are many insects that are fond of the flowers also.  Then I lay them out on my dehydrator tray and set it to 95 degrees (the lowest setting) because I only want to dry them, not cook them.

 

At this setting it takes about two days to get them fully dry.  I usually wait until they crumble into dust when I pinch them. 

Once they are dry, there really isn't much left of them.  The finished product gets funneled into a jar where it awaits the next step in it's journey of becoming tea.