Tea
Harvesting and Growing
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.
The
types of tea that differing procedures create are white,
green, oolong,
and black. I explain the procedure
for each type on their respective pages.
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