Growing Chamomile (German): A Complete Profile

By Growing Home Greens Team · July 29, 2026

German chamomile is grown for its small, daisy-like flowers, dried for tea, and it earns extra credit in a vegetable garden for the beneficial insects its blooms attract.

Sowing it

Start indoors about 6 weeks before your last frost, or direct-sow right around that date, either way, scatter seed on the surface and leave it uncovered, since it needs light to germinate. It moves fast, reaching bloom in about 60 days, and plants in dense.

Plain seed sold as “German chamomile” is fine for a few plants of tea, but if you’re growing enough to dry and use through the winter, ‘Bodegold’ is bred for exactly that: more flowers, an upright habit that’s easier to pick from, and field trials showing it out-yielding older strains.

It’s a cool-season annual: expect it to bolt and stop flowering once summer heat sets in, so treat it as a spring (and, in mild climates, fall) crop rather than an all-summer one.

Heat is the only real limitation

Chamomile is generally easygoing, and its main limitation is simply the heat, a planting that stalls out and stops flowering in midsummer isn’t diseased, it’s just done for the season. Succession-sow a fresh batch for fall if you want a second bloom window once temperatures ease.

Pest management with a tea harvest attached

Chamomile’s traditional pairing with cabbage is thought to help mask the scent brassica pests key in on, and with onion it’s a traditional pairing said to improve flavor and growth in both. See the full companion guide for chamomile. Its blooms draw in hoverflies and parasitic wasps that prey on aphids, which is a practical reason to tuck a patch near aphid-prone crops in the Garden Designer, beyond the tea harvest itself.

Sources: German Chamomile, Montana State University Western Agricultural Research Center.

Companion planting guide for Chamomile (German) · Find your planting dates

Typically viable in USDA zones 2-10. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.

Method: Start indoors: Start indoors from seed, then transplant outside. Chamomile (German) needs a head start most zones can't give it by direct-sowing alone.

See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →

How many Chamomile (German) plants fit per square foot?

Spacing: 4 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 1-2 ft.

Varieties worth considering

'Bodegold': A tetraploid strain bred for tea and oil production rather than looks. Montana State University's herb trials found it grew more upright than the older 'Bona' strain and produced the heaviest yields of the cultivars they tested, which matters if you're growing enough for a real harvest and not just a few flowers to look at. (source)
'Bona': The older strain Montana State trialed against Bodegold: flowers first each year with a more spreading habit, against Bodegold's more upright, mechanical-harvest-friendly growth. Montana's own raking trial got nearly 1,500 lb/acre of tea-grade flowers from Bona. (source)
'Zloty Lan': A Polish tetraploid bred for commercial production and high essential oil content (0.8-1.5%), a different breeding goal from Bodegold and Bona's tea-yield focus. Worth choosing if oil, not dried flowers, is the goal. (source)

Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.

Where to buy chamomile seeds

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this page also go to other retailers we may earn a commission from as an affiliate, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products with a genuine consensus of positive, independent reviews. See the sources cited on each item.

See it growing

Search YouTube for "growing chamomile (german)" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)

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Growing Chamomile (German): A fast, cool-season herb that doubles as pest management, its blooms draw in the insects that prey on aphids.

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