The tea plant is capable of growing naturally to almost 10 metres high. Its height is normally kept to about 1 metre to facilitate plucking of the leaves. Tea essentially requires:
(i) Abundant and evenly distributed rainfall and sunshine for commercial production. (ii) Deep, permeable, well-drained, fertile and acidic soil. (iii) High altitudes. Tea grows best at altitudes ranging from sea level to about 2000 metres above. Tea does not survive in water-logged conditions.
A Tea Bush
Planting materials Planting materials are of two kinds:
(i) Seeds. It is the traditional source of planting material. It takes about 4 to 15 years for a tea plant to produce seed. (ii) Cuttings. It is also known as cloning (hence clones) and it is a way of vegetative propagating of tea. Cuttings are taken from selected tea plants, which show excellent characteristics to produce good tea. Cuttings are planted in plastic tubes in the same way as seeds are planted. The tubes have the same soil type and also the same mixture of fertilizer. By eighteen months the plants are ready for planting in the field.
Vegetative Propagation
Pruning Pruning is the cutting off sections of branches to keep the plant at a height of about 1 metre. One of the objectives is to prevent the plant from flowering, and the other is to keep it low enough for manual plucking. This also promotes lateral growth of the plant, thus providing a larger plucking table and hence more plucking points.
Plucking Plucking is an art and requires skilled labour to pluck the tender and apical portion of shoots consisting of two leaves and the terminal bud. Research has shown that the best tea is made from the unopened bud and the first two leaves on young shoots. Mechanical harvesters, though used in some countries, are not conducive to producing good quality tea. A common saying in the tea industry is “quality starts in the field and no factory can make quality tea from poor leaf”.
