Growing German Chamomile Lifecycle Guide

(The following article is comprised of the text transcript from the referenced youtube video.)

Today I'm going to walk you through the steps that I use to grow German chamomile in a container. And I'm going to walk you through the entire life cycle for the year in 2025. First things first, we exist here and grow in USDA Hardiness Zone 6A and 6B. So we're negative 10 to 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. The soils are different everywhere so that makes a big difference as well as you know if you're enjoying gardening.

Starting Indoors: April 2025

Here we are in April 13th 2025. On the left we have four chamomile plants on the right. There's some lavender in the cell tray. You can see there's some powdery mildew in this larger chamomile plant. You can take care of that with simple hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle. I don't know what other methods other people use but that is probably the most simple and widely available that we use when we're growing inside. Preparing for the summer.

Moving Outdoors: Late May

Here is May 24th. This is the first day this got out into a container as a bottom reservoir. And it was kind of late in the season honestly. We didn't achieve 50 to 60 degrees consistently Fahrenheit outdoors until late May of this year. So here it is May 24th 2025. Just a week or so later June 2nd 2025. You can see that rapid growth.

First Flowering and Harvesting: Late June

Then about three or four weeks later we finally achieved the flowering on June 29th 2025. So this is when you get to this stage you start picking the flower heads. You can do it by hand. And then what I do is I wash them with a food grade sanitizer. And then what I do I rinse them a lot with water but then the food grade sanitizer. And then I put them in a food dehydrator and take them up past pasteurization temperature around 160 for two hours. And then I bring these back down to around 100 for the remainder of the dry time because they claim that if you overheat these it removes the flavor from them. I mean everything always tastes the best fresh but this holds up pretty well once it is dehydrated.

Continued Growth: Summer 2025

Here's another one. Here it is at July 26th. So you can see it just kind of continued to rapidly expand. I stopped really harvesting this and just let it kind of fall on the ground. At this point in time I kind of just let it go because I already had enough for a very long time. It was very low maintenance. No disease it got to this the entire time when it was outside. A lot of flying insects like to come to these so I really wash them and only take the most pristine flowers from them. And they propagate so quickly that you can really be very picky in terms of what you're going to keep.

Harvest Results: November 2025

So here's the result. This is on November 4th 2025. You can see this. I had dried them throughout the year. If you use one to two of these that's the amount that is typically in a tea you would buy in the store I would say. So the key is you just let them steep for about 10 minutes in hot water. And they are like I said you only need one to two of them.

And here it is. Check this out. This is the plant itself on November 4th. That's today 2025. And so it has receded itself kind of late in the season. I stopped picking any of the flowers. You can see it actually has a few on there still amazingly. We've had a few freezing temperatures at night. We're getting into zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees. We're getting below that probably twice a week now. And I will probably cover this and keep the water off it during the winter. That I don't think this plan is expected to survive over the winter, especially out of the ground because its roots will get very cold. But I'll put it up somewhere warm and try and maybe cover the top. And maybe it'll survive for next season.

Key Takeaways

So I hope this has been helpful. And I would greatly encourage you to check out this plant on your own. It's very easy to grow. I had read that when I was doing my research that it was very easy to grow. But I didn't believe it. But it really is. And it's a fun plant to have around. It smells great in your garden. And it's great for tea and any other culinary experiments you want to try with it. So good luck with this plan. And I hope you found this helpful.