Last year I planted Chamomile, with no great success. I tried it in various places and had a little bit grow around my homemade birdbath. It produced one really good bunch of flowers, which were duly harvested and made into Chamomile tea.
But what I had forgotten, when I had been, with desperate conviction, trying to get my chamomile to grow, was that I had ‘lost’ almost half a packet of seeds that had spilled out of the envelope. Fast forward to a little over a year later and I now know where the seeds have gone.
We were changing a couple of our planting beds over to hugelkulture this year, using old tree branches cut down last year. Our first hugelkulture bed has done so well, we are slowly changing all our beds over. It’s just a matter of saving up old wood and branch cuttings. And all a bit late this year as well, as the weather has been terrible. Very little sun and quite cold, in fact frosts into late April. So it wasn’t a tragedy that our beds were going in a little late this year.
But it also gave a chance to an unknown plant to grow along the paths of one of the raised beds. I had a vague inkling that I recognised the greenery, so decided to leave it to see what resulted. It was as I had conjectured, or should I truthfully say, hoped. The plants were my long lost chamomile seeds. And May brought forth its flowers, in abundance. Hoorah! Lot’s of chamomile tea this year!
See what a little clumsiness, laziness and downright curiosity can sow?
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Have you had loads of tea from this? I love happy accidents
Heaps! I had so much I had to hang some for drying as they wouldn’t all fit on my drying racks. Slowly working my way through the batch, taking off stems and then storing in jars. In amongst this I also have lavender on the go. Busy times (my excuse and apologies for not replying sooner!)