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You can make your own Giant Hyssop tea. It's easy and fun to do. The leaves and flowers of hyssop contain oils that provide a pleasant licorice (anise) flavour. Plants can be harvested any time during the growth season, but mid-summer, when the flowers are just past full bloom, is the best time. Cut the stalks off at ground level with a sharp knife or shears. Tie bunches of stalks together and hang them upside down, somewhere cool, dry and out of the sun, until the leaves and flowers are brittle. Then strip the leaves and flower parts off the stems and crush them into tiny bits. Placing the leaves into a large plastic bag and crushing them by hand works well. Put the resulting "tea" mix into a sealed container to keep it dry.
You can use hyssop tea as you would any other tea. You'll probably need to experiment a bit to find out what concentrations you prefer. A regular tea ball filled with hyssop can suffice for a full pot of tea or you can use it to supplement regular teas. A tea ball of hyssop and one tea bag of regular tea makes a nice combination. There are a couple of things to bear in mind when harvesting hyssop for tea. First of all, check the plants to see if they contain the flavoured oils. Sometimes individual plants have little of no flavour. Whether this is a genetic trait or the result of environmental conditions isn't known. You can test for flavour by picking a leave off the plant. Crush and roll it between your fingers, then take a sniff. If you smell the licorice scent strongly then the plant will make good tea. If not, look elsewhere. And, wherever you are harvesting, be it your garden or from the wild, don't remove all the plants for tea. Always leave at least half the "crop" so the plants will be able to grow for the rest of the season and replenish themselves for next year's harvest. It's OK to use our natural heritage, provided you conserve it for tomorrow.
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