We harvested the small planter of lemon balm from within our enclosure (we have a few more big beds of lemon balm growing as we speak) and, using our fantastic new dehydrator – thanks to some friends on the island! – we dried the leaves and made them into loose leaf tea.

Step 1 – Grow some lemon balm!

Step 2 – Snip back the leaves – remember you need a lot to make enough for storage.

Step 3 – Set it up in the dehydrator and let the machine do the work

Step 4 – It gets so small when it’s dried!

Step 5 – Place dried leaves in a bowl and crunch them down into small pieces.

Step 6 – Store in an airtight container for later use.

This stuff smells amazing!! So lemony. We are working to build a collection of dried herbs like this so we can mix them into tasty loose leaf tea blends. Obviously, we can also dry oregano, basil, etc for use as dried herbs in food as well. But TEA. I’m obsessed with tea.