Tea growing
Plant Grow: Tea grows mainly between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, requiring up to 1000-1250mm of rain per year, as well as a temperature ideally between 10 to 30 degrees centigrade. It will grow from sea level up to 2400 metres. The tea garden (tea estate) is where the flavour potential of the tea will be generated, and so great care and attention is taken to insure that the best possible growing conditions are created. This means in some cases planting trees to generate shade, or planting wind breaks, to prevent damage from strong winds, particularly on the plains of Assam. Plants are placed in rows some approximately one metre apart.
The bushes must be pruned every four to five years in order to rejuvenate the bush and keeping it at a convenient height for the pluckers to pick the tea from. This is known as the "Plucking Table". A tea bush may happily produce good tea for 50 – 70 years, but after 50 years the plants yield will reduce. At this time the older bushes will be considered for replacement by younger plants grown on the estates nursery.
Plucking: Plucking rounds depend on climate; new growth can be plucked at 7 - 12 day intervals during the growing season. Tea harvesting is exhaustive and labour intensive (between two and three thousand tea leaves are needed to produce just a kilo of unprocessed tea) and is a procedure of considerable skill. Tea pluckers, learn to recognize the exact moment at which the flush should be removed. This is important, to ensure the tenderest leaves are plucked to produce the finest teas. After plucking, leaves are transported to factories for processing. The fields are normally adjacent to the factory.
Tea harvesting
Tea harvesting is a laborious task that requires some training in order to yield the best results. When plucking the leaves for a high quality tea, they pluck the bud and the second and third leaves only. This is called fine plucking.
If more leaves are taken with the bud it is said to be a coarse plucking and produces a lower quality tea. Sometimes mature leaves are discarded giving each bush a pruning which enables nutrients to go into new growth.
The best climate conditions are usually those that are higher in altitude and get plenty of rainfall. It also seems preferable to have cooler weather and misty mornings to shield the sun which causes the bush to mature more slowly.
A typical tea bush will generally produce about three thousand tea leaves a year. Now before you get any ideas of buying a tea bush and making a fortune, you might want to know that these three thousand leaves only make up only about one pound of fully processed tea.
Once the tea leaves are collected in baskets they are taken to the factory to be processed. The processing steps taken will depend on the type of tea desired.
