How I Made My Own Raspberry Mint Tea (And Why It Felt Better Than Anything I Could've Ordered)
I could have bought this tea on Amazon and had it delivered overnight. Instead, I spent a Saturday morning in my garden — and it has changed the way I think about my whole year.
The Accidental Tea Garden
A few years ago, we planted four red raspberry bushes — mostly for our toddler, who could walk up and pick them herself. She devoured them so fast we ended up planting 20 more. (My husband planted 20 more. Let's be accurate.)
What I didn't plan for was the leaves.
After watching a video from More Than Farmers, I learned that red raspberry leaves — especially harvested early in spring — make a beautiful herbal tea. And suddenly I was looking at those 24 plants very differently.
This is year 1 of 20 additional raspberry plants in spring
I'm primarily a coffee drinker. But during my third trimester, I got into red raspberry leaf tea — specifically Earth Mama's Third Trimester Tea, which blended it with mint. That mintiness stuck with me. And when I looked over at my 4x4 raised bed of spearmint, the plan wrote itself.
What You'll Need
If you want to try this yourself, here's what I used:
Red raspberry leaves (fresh, harvested from canes you'd trim anyway)
Fresh spearmint leaves
A food dehydrator — mine is an old one my husband had before we even met. Nothing fancy, but it works great!
Glass mason jars for storage
A loose leaf tea infuser or reusable tea bags
How I Harvested and Dried the Leaves
In early June — later than I meant to, but that's life with two toddlers and a full-time job — I went out and stripped leaves from the canes we were already cutting back. Since raspberry bushes spread, it’s actually a great use of cutting back those canes.
Raspberry leaves placed in the dehydrator.
For the red raspberry leaves: I loaded the dehydrator trays and ran it at 95°F (the herbs setting) overnight. The leaves dried to a crisp, light texture. I stored them in a glass mason jar until the mint was ready.
For the spearmint: I tried air-drying first — bundled and hung on a hanger. It worked, just slowly. Once the dehydrator freed up, I moved the mint in and bumped the temp slightly to 105°F. It took longer than I expected, but the oils stayed intact.
The blend: 1.5 parts red raspberry leaf : 1 part spearmint
The Taste Test (Honest Results)
I brewed five cups:
Store-bought loose leaf red raspberry tea — warm, mild, light brown color, almost like a soft black tea
My homemade red raspberry leaf tea — lighter in color (pale yellow-green), more subtle, slightly "green" tasting
Earth Mama Third Trimester Tea — the mint makes all the difference; bright and flavorful
My homemade raspberry + spearmint blend — the mint elevated it completely. Mild, fresh, smells like the actual herbs
Bigelow Plantation Mint (the black tea mint I grew up on) — I expected this to win… It didn't.
The verdict: my homemade blend tasted nearly identical to the store-bought third trimester tea I've loved. No preference between the two. And the homemade one cost a Saturday morning vs. $13 for a small pack with a lot of packaging.
I'll call that a win.
Why It Feels Different (And It Does Feel Different)
I could list the practical benefits — no pesticides, no packaging, no transportation energy, harvested at peak freshness. All true.
But that's not actually why this felt significant.
There's a feeling I get when I look down at a dinner plate and realize over 60% of it came from our garden. Last summer, we had steak on the grill with potatoes we dug up, fresh zucchini, onions — all ours. It tastes slightly better. But the experience of eating it is completely different.
There's this quiet pride in knowing your hands fed your family.
And I've been thinking about the two kinds of tired.
At the end of a corporate workday — back-to-back meetings, constant context-switching, being pinged mid-meeting — I feel like a prune. Juice sucked out. Mentally wrecked, sitting down all day. I walk out of my little gray cubicle under fluorescent lights and I have nothing left.
But after a full day in the garden? Feet aching, maybe my back. Physically tired. But mentally alive. No urge to collapse on the couch and scroll until my brain turns off. I feel accomplished. Inspired.
That contrast is the whole point.
This Tea Is the Start of Something
I've been rethinking how I want to give gifts this year. Scrolling Amazon trying to find something for a person who already buys everything they want — it feels empty. I want to give things made with intention, over the course of a whole year.
A jar of this tea. Some raspberry jam from the same bushes. A scone mix. Things that took thought and care and time, and that won't become clutter.
That's what I want to give to the people I love. And this Saturday morning was just the beginning of building that.
Start Where You Are
I've spent four years building up my garden. You don't need any of that.
If you have a patio or balcony, a single pot of spearmint is the easiest experiment you can run. That plant grows aggressively. Pick up a start from your local nursery or order one online, let it go a little wild, and by midsummer you'll have more mint than you know what to do with.
The investment is small. The return is hard to quantify — until you're sitting with a mug you made yourself and you realize it's enough.
Want to see the full harvest, drying process, and taste test? Watch the video above.
