Of the many crops you can plant in Stardew Valley, none provides a more relaxing yield than the Tea Sapling.
Growing these versatile plants can make for a soothing difference in your day if you know what to do with them, so here’s how to grow Tea Saplings and what to use them for.
Where to Get Tea Saplings in Stardew Valley
The best and most consistent way to get a tea sapling in Stardew is actually by befriending Caroline. After you reach her two-heart event, you’ll receive the crafting recipe in the mail and you’ll be able to plant tea bushes to your heart’s content. You can craft a tea sapling with 2 Wild Seeds from any season, 5 Fiber and 5 Wood.
To get the recipe, once you’ve got two hearts of friendship with Caroline, head into Pierre’s and go past the store into their home. Head into Caroline’s sunroom and you’ll be greeted with a cutscene, and the next day you’ll receive the recipe for the Tea Saplings in the mail.
That being said, you don’t have to have a tea bush of your own planted to get your hands on some leaves. Caroline’s got a tea bush in her sunroom and if you go up to it during that last week of the month, you can harvest it like you would your own.
While she is the easiest way to get some tea leaves, befriending Caroline isn’t technically the only method. You can occasionally get them from the Traveling Cart, but there’s not much pattern as to when they’ll come about.
How to Plant Tea Saplings
Tea Saplings behave similar to how fruit trees do, in the sense that they can only be planted in untilled plots or in a garden pot. They don’t have to be watered for them to grow, and they don’t die in the winter like other crops.
Tea Saplings will grow in the Spring, Summer and Fall, but if you’ve got them indoors, they’ll be able to grow in the Winter as well. This makes them a great plant to have in your house, as you can make the most out of the space both inside and out.
Tea Bushes will take 20 days to reach maturity, at which point you’ll be able to harvest your Tea Leaves. Luckily, once it reaches maturity, you’ll be able to harvest one tea leaf per day until the end of the month.
How to Use Tea Leaves
As you might expect, you can’t just eat tea leaves right off the bush. Instead, they’ve got to be made into something a little more…artisanal. You can use the leaves to make either Green Tea or or Pickled Tea Leaves, but you’ll need the right equipment for each.
You can make Green Tea by putting tea leaves into a Keg, which will be ready in only three hours. Alternatively, you can put the leaves into a Preserves Jar and after 2-3 days, you’ll have yourself some pickled tea leaves, if you’re into that sorta thing.
Green tea will not only give you a little extra energy and health, but it’ll also give you a four-minute buff that brings you to max energy. That’s incredibly useful for trying to spend long days in the mines or skull cavern.
That’s all there is for how to plant Tea Saplings in Stardew Valley and what to do with the leaves. You can stock up on tea for energy, or use the pickled leaves to pad your profits. If you could use other guides on things like where to get cranberries or where to catch a sea cucumber, be sure to keep checking back here.