Grow Your Own Tea by Christine Parks and Susan M. Walcott is a delightful book that sets out to answer the question that nags any tea enthusiast who is also a home-gardener. Can you grow tea at home? Turns out the answer is not so straightforward. With beautiful pictures and insights drawn from their years of experience, the authors break down the prospects of growing tea at home and the highs and lows of it. From picking the right plant to setting up an ideal growth environment, the book offers a wealth of information for tea enthusiasts. Even if one decides not to follow the not-so complex processes involved in growing tea at home, the book offers multiple recipes so there's a takeaway for everyone even remotely interested in tea.

A very comprehensive guide to tea growing. Easy to follow. It gave me a good project to keep me busy during quarantine.

While I did not download the eARC of this book, I was gifted a copy from a friend.

I have really enjoyed going through this book. While I have tried my hand at tea in the past with little success, reading this book has given me a new path forward on how to tackle tea in my garden. The soil in potters is the biggest help I could receive.

I also appreciated the history and other information on tea. This book is a wealth of helpful information and deserves a place on your gardening shelves.

I received an eARC from Timber Press through NetGalley. All opinions are 100% my own.

This is a detailed introduction to growing and harvesting tea plants. Perfect for tea aficionados who are interested in taking that love one step further, the book includes comprehensive discussion on the different types of tea, how they best grow, and how to adapt one's own space to grow, harvest, and prepare tea for use. Loaded with color photos, graphs, and information. It was a little out of my league - I'm more of a container gardener, and don't have the right growing conditions for tea - but I would recommend this to my customers with backyard space, absolutely.

Fills a definite need, since there aren't any other books out here like it. It is a solid, comprehensive guide. The photographs are absolutely lovely, and I really enjoyed the cultural history of tea. Ultimately, I learned that growing my own tea is just too intensive a process to be compatible with my life, but heck -- I hadn't known that before! All in all, I really enjoyed this book, an I recommend that tea lovers and gardeners alike pick it up.

I won't be recommending this for my library to purchase because of the highly specific nature of my library. But I will be recommending that other libraries buy it, including the two public libraries in my area, and a membership library that I belong to.

What a fantastic book! As a devoted tea drinker i really loved this book and now have a shopping list of things to try out. Everything was laid out perfectly and i truly recommend this book to tea enthusiasts!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an E-ARC of this book.

Love Tea? Grow Your Own!

Did you know that the tea plant is actually a variety of camellia? Even though I have been a lifelong tea lover, I didn't know that little fact until I read this book. This book offers so much cool and interesting information if you love tea. Prior to this book, I had only thought of tea as coming from parts of Asia. Even my favorite Oregon teamaker proudly touts that he sources his leaves from all over (mostly) Asia. But, apparently, quietly, there has been a resurgence of interest in growing small-batch or homegrown tea in the United States and Great Britain. This book enthusiastically embraces the idea that you can cultivate and process tea in your own garden for your personal enjoyment and gives you the information you need to make that happen. The first thing that struck me about this book was how richly and beautifully photographed it is. If you think of tea as just being hardened black bits in either a tea bag or tea strainer, this book will introduce you to all the different colors and shadings of tea. The book goes into a little of tea’s history and the different types before moving into how to actually grow tea plants—providing such detailed information like growing from seedlings and pruning at various stages—and then process the leaves. At the end of the book are even recipes using tea. The authors also looked at places in the United States and Great Britain that are doing interesting things with tea. In fact, if you are a true aficionado, you could create a “tea tour” for yourself with the places mentioned. A couple of them are close to me, so I will have to check them out once we can travel and all places are open again. If you are a tea person like me, you will most likely enjoy this book just for its information alone. But if you're also a gardener who loves tea, this book may very well inspire you to want to grow your own tea. I know I'm thinking about it after reading the book.

This was an incredibly detailed and intensive look at tea making. The authors have a passion for tea and it's clear in their knowledge and obvious love of the process.
It's was a clear and concise primer for anyone with a large garden and the time to dedicate to cultivating their crops.

For me, a condo dweller in a cool climate with a small container garden, this just wasn't my cup of tea, pardon the pun, I am certain however that this would be a fantastic book in the library of a seasoned gardener.

Aimed at home gardeners this is an excellent introduction to growing tea in North America and Europe (mostly UK & Ireland). Grow Your Own Tea covers picking the right cultivars for your climate, whether to grow from seed or buy plants, grow in the ground or in pots, how to look after the plants, prune, harvest and prepare the tea, finishing up with some recipes (both edible and not) for things to do with the finished products.

A self-avowed tea lover, this book was a real treat. The book contains everything about tea from the supposed origins of the drink to how to grow the plant in various areas to specialty drinks. The book spurred a desire for a "cuppa" and some travels! Highly recommended for anyone who loves tea.

This was a beautiful book with great descriptions and explanations. I really want to grow my own tea now!

Grow Your Own Tea: The Complete Guide to Cultivating, Harvesting, and Preparing by Christine Parks; Susan M. Walcott is currently scheduled for release on September 1 2020. Consumer interest in tea has grown rapidly in recent years and continues to climb. Worldwide there are 25,000 cups of tea consumed every second—more than billion cups per day. For tea drinkers interested in the freshest flavor, growing the leaves at home is the ideal solution. Lucky for them, tea is not an exotic, hard-to-grow crop—it can be successfully grown anywhere that camellias can be grown. In Grow Your Own Tea, readers will learn how to cultivate, harvest, and process this venerable crop. Parks and Wolcott share details on how to get started; describe cultivation, long-term maintenance, and harvesting; show how to grow tea plants in containers; and describe how to process and store harvested tea leaves. This book includes information on how to produce white, green, oolong, and black teas.

Grow Your Own Tea caught my eye as soon as I saw it on Netgalley. I am an avid tea drinker and an avid gardener, so this book was right up my alley. I already grow many of my own herbs and have used my own mints and other herbs to flavor loose tea, but was interested to learn more about the cultivation and drying process. I had read about the different types of tea before, but I leaned even more about the history and diversity of tea in this book. I thought I was too far north to grow tea, but was thrilled to discover that there is a variety of tea I just might be able to cultivate and use. I found the information to be very well organized, accessible, and interesting. Everything a tea grower might need is covered, from how to plant, to how to harvest and make use of the results, and everything in between. I cannot wait to put my newfound knowledge into action, and to share the results with the other tea drinkers in my life. The resources and information at the end of the book was helpful as well.

Grow Your Own Tea is an informative and valuable resource for tea lovers. I am planning on buying a physical copy of this book for my own reference library.

Grow Your Own Tea was an interesting book packed full of information. I was looking for something more hands on as far as growing my own tea. Instead this book made it seem overwhelming and nearly impossible. In the end that might not be a bad thing as I now have no interest in even trying.

Grow Your Own Tea is a comprehensive guide to growing, harvesting, and processing tea from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis. Due out 1st Sept from Workman Publishing on their Timber Press imprint, it's 208 pages (print version) and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is as advertised, an encyclopedic guide to cultivating, harvesting, and preparing tea. It's laid out logically, and the language is accessible, the instructions achievable (given some determination and favorable climate considerations). The authors are experienced tea farmers and have provided a good groundwork for the curious home gardener to succeed with tea growing.

The introductory chapters cover the history of tea, contemporary tea culture in the USA, and the agriculturally relevant info on the tea plant. Worth noting, this book is concerned with the culture and processing of Camellia sinensis, and not the other plants we often use for infusing drinks and tisanes such as mint, chamomile, nettle, lavender, lemon verbena, etc.

The bulk of the content is devoted to a detailed tutorial for choosing, siting, sourcing, planting, and caring for tea plants. The troubleshooting and diagnostic guides in these chapters are very well done and worthwhile for related plants in the Camellia genus as well. The pictures are very clear and useful. Whilst the bulk of the book seems aimed to a somewhat larger scale gardener blessed with good climate, soil, and other favorable conditions, the authors do include a very interesting subchapter on container growing. I'm definitely going to get a couple of plants and try cool greenhouse cultivation. If I managed to grow peaches and nectarines in Norway, I am hopeful for a positive outcome for tea also.

This is an interesting and comprehensive well written guide to growing and processing tea. This would be a nice selection for tea lovers, serious gardeners, or those who like a horticultural challenge. There aren't many layman-accessible specific guides for cultivating and processing tea (the vast majority are focused on herbal teas or foraged plants), so this is a standout selection in a very small pool of choices. Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Tea is one of those plants that has changed and shaped the world. You can tell a lot about someone's culture by how they drink it. Hot or iced? With milk and sugar or without? Spiced? Green? Black? White?
The story of tea permeates the earth's history. This book takes a good look at that history, the regions it has been grown in, who drank, and how.
And now, small artisan tea companies are starting to pop up and, with the help of this book, you can even grow your very own.
This book gives great tips on soil to grow in, how to propagate, which types will grow best in which climates - a very thorough look at how to create your own crop of this luscious beverage. Learn to grow and imbibe all on your own!

Literally a textbook method to growing, harvesting, and making your own tea from the leaf. Anyone looking to really grow their own tea crop would be remiss in not grabbing this eccentric guide. From the history of tea to actually putting it in your cup.

What did I like? I love a great garden and I think I should have a plant of tea or two in my garden. Although after reading this, I realize it may actually be harder than it looks. I live in the south and I think I should give it a try but this book makes planting tea look tricky. Obviously these people are experts, and I don’t drink much tea but I don’t think a plant or two will devastate me.

Would I recommend or buy? I’m not that big into tea but I still took a look to see how hard it would be. Over two hundred pages worth I realized, these people love tea. I still think I will enjoy trying, I’m a novice but if it works well I’ll try next year to grow more. This book is all about tea plants, so grab and enjoy if that’s your thing!

I received a copy to read and offer an opinion. Four stars!

The author has given wonderful tips on proper harvesting.
It's nice to know how the tea that people drink goes into their cups in the first place.Pretty good compilation of information.

Thanks to Timber press for providing me with an e-ARC of this book!

Do you love tea?  Do you love to garden?  Have you ever wanted to learn more about tea and its history?  Have you ever wondered if you could grow your own tea?  Well, this is the book for you.

Tea growing is not going to happen in my climate?  Wait, you can grow a tea plant in a pot!  And, get this, some varieties of tea tolerate cold-climate - even places where it snows!

So, bring your dreams to life and try growing your own tea!

So enjoyed reading this book. Well rounded with how our delicious tea comes into our tea cups. The photographs are beautiful. I recommend this book.

Very thorough book on growing tea from planting to processing. It goes into detail how and when to plant and harvest tea plants. If I ever decide to grow tea plants myself this is the book I will use as my guide.