Traditionally,
tea plants were grown from seeds the size of hazelnuts, gathered in
October and kept over the winter in a mixture of sand and earth.
With this method, in spring they are sown either in a nursery area
or directly into the field, about four feet apart. After two years
the plants, now five to six feet tall, are cut back to about one
foot. They are allowed to grow a bit, but after that are pruned
weekly to keep them waist high. Plucking can begin at three years,
or at five in high altitudes. A bush can produce for thirty or forty
years.
Plants can also be started from cuttings or through layering, that
is, transplanting of rooted branches. The years since the 1960s have
seen cloning, which involves a leaf cutting rather than a branch
cutting. The layering and cutting methods are the only ones that
yield a true reproduction of a strain, as a plant that grows from
seed may be the result of cross-fertilization and unlike either of
its parents.
Most tea plants have a flush, or growth, period
and a dormant phase. The leaves are plucked when the young shoots,
or flush, are coming out. In the hotter climates the plants have
several flushes and leaves can be plucked all year round. At higher
elevations, there is a distinct plucking season. In most parts of
China, harvesting takes place from April to October. Plucking in
northern India and Japan is also seasonal.
Leaves from the earlier flushes, usually in
spring, are considered the most desirable, with the second flush the
best of all. The reason for this is that the sunlight is milder in
the spring than in summer or fall. The choice parts to be plucked
are the "two leaves and a bud" (the first two leaves and the bud at
the tip), a poetic phrase which was used as the title of a fine
novel by the Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand. they are nipped off by
the thumbnail with a downward movement of the thumb. The leaf bud is
considered the finest quality, partly for the fine hair, or tip, on
the end and underside of the leaf. This, the pekoe (in Chinese bai
bao or white hair), is what imparts the finest flavor to the tea.
The more white down the better.
Plucking and pruning take a great deal of labor, and labor is listed
with acid soil and adequate rainfall as one of the three things
necessary for growing tea. In India tea cultivation started on large
estates which more easily lent themselves to mechanization. In China
tea was produced mainly on small family plots, often in the hills
where mechanized cultivation was difficult.
China is one of the few countries in the world still considered to
have land that can be opened for tea growing, and large state tea
farms as well as smaller plots have been established on unused land.
Picking remains one major operation that has never been successfully
mechanized, as skilled fingers have not been successfully replaced.
Although picking is still done by expert hands, these farms are
highly mechanized in other respects, even so far as use of spray
irrigation.
